Seasonal Changes in Zooplankton Population in Rainfed Rice-fish System

Abstract

Integration of aquaculture in vast rainfed waterlogged lowlands can be an acceptable option for improvement of farm productivity and income in the country, particularly in the easter India. An adaptable technology on rice-fish, prawn, vegetable, fruits and other crops diversified farming system called Rice-fish System· has been developed at Central Rice Research Institute, Cuttack for waterlogged rainfed lowlands (Sinhababu and Venkateswarlu, 1995). Studies on the food and feeding habit of fish in this system is an important aspect for optimizing the fish productivity. Some information is available on the plankton profile of the irrigated rice field mainly (Saha and Ramakrishna, 1962; Li and Pan, 1992) and deep water ecology (Das et al., 1991) and also in shallow rainfed rice-fish seed system (Sinhababu et al., 1992), but not in the rice-fish system. We studied the seasonal changes in the zooplankton population in the system.