Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
10
Microbial Reclamation of Fish
Industry By-products
N.Bhaskar,* N.M. Sachindra, P.V. Suresh
and
N.S. Mahendrakar
INTRODUCTION
The world fi sh production has almost stagnated and presently stands at
a little more than 14 million metric tonnes (MMT) (FAO, 2010). This can
be seen by the considerably lower changes in production fi gures in the
last 5 yr (
Table 10.1
). Fish processing in general is an economic activity
that generates considerable foreign exchange to a maritime nation. For
instance, Indian seafood exports in 2008 stood at about US $ 1908 billion
with the total quantities of seafood exported being 602,835 MMT (MPEDA,
2010). Major aquatic products that dominate the export market come from
the marine sector (both culture and capture). The major marine foods that
are exported include shrimps, molluscs (squids, cuttle fi shes, octopuses,
oysters, mussels and clams) and fi n fi shes (tuna, seer, pomfret, etc.) mainly
in frozen form. Apart from this processed marine products like
surimi
,
canned products and ready-to-eat fi sh products are also exported.
Initially, fi sh sources appeared to be inexhaustible and by-products
arising out of fi sh processing were seen as being worthless and discarded
(Gildberg, 2004). This, apart from resulting in the loss of huge amounts of
protein rich by-products also led to pollution problems. Although some by-
products like shrimp waste are being utilized today, a huge amount is still
being discarded creating both disposal and pollution problems. Annual
discard from the fi sh industry is estimated to be 18-30 MMT around the
world (Elvevoll, 2004), accounting for 25 to 30% of global fi sh production
Department of Meat, Fish and Poultry Technology, Central Food Technological Research Institute
(CSIR), Mysore 570 020, India
*Corresponding author: E-mail:
bhasg3@yahoo.co.in
