A Brainstorming meeting was organized at ICAR-VPKAS, Almora on 23.01.23 to explore the possibilities of research collaboration between ICAR- VPKAS, Almora and ICAR- DCFR, Bhimtal. Scientists from both Institute’s participated in the meeting. The main agenda of meeting was to discuss if the QPM maize developed by this institute, could be used as fish feed ingredient. Dr Lakshmi Kant, Director ICAR-VPKAS welcome the Director, ICAR- DCFR and participating Scientists. He highlighted the work done at the institute with special reference to QPM and thanked to Dr. P. K. Pandey, Director, ICAR- DCFR for kindly agreeing for this meeting. He also emphasized that the basic idea is to look for the possibility if QPM could be used as an ingredient in fish feed and if it could affect any improvement in fish. The formal meeting started with ICAR Geet. Dr. Pramod Kumar Pandey, Director ICAR-DCFR along with Scientists Dr. Biju Sam Kamalam J and Dr. Rajesh M express their gratitude of ICAR-VPKAS to take initiative of inter-institutional collaboration. He further highlighted the importance of fish in economy and expressed that possibly this collaboration will go a long way. He did mention that we should look for at least if we could replace a portion of costly ingredients with QPM.
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A presentation was made by Dr R. K. Khulbe, maize breeder of ICAR-VPKAS on Quality Protein Maize (QPM) and the possibilities of use of QPM maize as fish feed ingredient. From the ICAR-DCFR side a presentation was also made by Dr. Biju Sam Kamalam J regarding the fish culture of rainbow trout and their feed ingredients. After the open discussion among the scientists of both the institute, an initiative for collaborative research for use of QPM in fish feed was initiated. In the initial study ICAR-VPKAS, Almora will provide 10 kg of QPM seed along with proximate and other quality parameters to DCFR, Bhimtal. QPM seed powder will be used in fish feed formulation and the initial phenotype of QPM feeded fish will be done by DCFR Bhimtal. Afterwards the other possibilities of research in this direction will be explored. The meeting ended with formal vote of thanks. All the heads of the division of ICAR-VPKAS, Drs. Ramesh Singh Pal and Shyam Nath along with scientist team, of ICAR-DCFR attended the meeting.
