“Freshwater Aquaculture – Prospects and Challenges for meeting the global demand.”
By Dr. M. Vijaya Gupta Ph.D, D.Sc (Hon)
World Food Prize Laureate
Assistant Director General, WorldFish Center (Retd.)
Senior Research Fellow, WorldFish Center, Malaysia
Tue 15 Sep 2009: 6:30 pm – 9:30 pm.
Venue: LT3, Block 7 Science Block, NIE, NTU
Click to see Map
Thanks to Shirley Lim, NIE/NTU, for the invitation.
About the speaker:.
“Through his dedicated and sustained efforts in Bangladesh, Laos and other countries in Southeast Asia , Dr. Gupta made small scale aquaculture a viable means for over one million very poor farmers and women to improve their family’s nutrition and wellbeing,” – Kenneth Quinn, president of the World Food Prize Foundation, 2005.
- See the World Food Prize laureate webpage.
- “Challenges in Sustaining and Increasing Fish Production to Combat Hunger and Poverty in Asia,” by MV Gupta. NAGA, WorldFish Center Quarterly Vol. 29 No. 1 & 2 Jan-Jun 2006 – pdf link.
- “Modadugu Gupta’s Blue Revolution.” Siliconeer, 6(7), 2005.
- News link: “Indian fish-farm researcher nets World Food Prize,” by James Njoroge. SciDev.Net, 19 Jul 2005. Gupta’s research focussed on improving rural livelihoods by farming freshwater fish.
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Norman Borlaug [Father of the Green Revolution] set up the World Food Prize in 1986. Each year, it honours individuals who have made “vital contributions to improving the quality, quantity, or availability of food throughout the world”.
Modadugu V. Gupta, who recently retired from the Malaysia-based WorldFish Centre, spent more than 30 years researching ways of making fish farming a sustainable contributor to rural livelihoods.
He has won the 2005 World Food Prize for his efforts to introduce fish farming to poor communities across Asia and parts of Africa
Announcing the US$250,000 award on 13 June, Kenneth Quinn, president of the World Food Prize Foundation, said that thanks to Gupta’s efforts, more than one million Asian farmers had improved their family’s nutrition and well being
Gupta focused on making it possible for poor farmers to raise fish in freshwater ponds with a minimum of inputs. He showed how farm waste such as weeds or grass could be used in place of costly fish feed and encouraged farmers to alternate agriculture and fish farming on seasonally flooded
land.According to Quinn, Gupta’s efforts brought “the Blue Revolution to those most in need” and led to freshwater fish production increasing by 3-5 times in some developing countries.’
