A review on the role of inland saline aquaculture in reclaiming saline wastelands

The persistent scarcity of resources has continually driven innovation in maximizing current assets and pursuing alternative strategies within aquaculture research and production. To meet the pressing challenges of nutritional security, researchers have uncovered several promising alternatives, with inland saline aquaculture emerging as a noteworthy approach for boosting aquaculture output and safeguarding food quality. India owns approximately 6.74 million hectares (Central Soil Salinity Research Institute) of salt-affected soil in its arid/semi-arid areas with changing salinity levels. These areas are mainly prevalent in regions of Indo-Gangetic plains across states like Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. These soils are the least productive and pose significant economic and ecosystem losses due to poor drainage, insufficient rainfall and several human activities such as excessive irrigation, deforestation and others. However, such soils create inland saline waters interact with the groundwater, providing an opportunity for aquaculture diversification and expansion. While several brackish and marine water fish species are cultivated in such regions across India, the thrust for exploring candidate freshwater culture species for Inland Saline Aquaculture is still a promising research domain. Subsequently, suitable guidelines for seed production and the culture of such candidate freshwater species in fallow land using inland saline water could be used for commercial production, advancing saline aquaculture. Such waste-to-wealth conversion will supplement stakeholders’ livelihoods and nutritional security. That helps to provide guidelines for seed production and culture of freshwater species (C. carpio) in fallow land using inland saline water. Inland saline water could be used to produce commercial fish species, leading to a forthcoming area in saline aquaculture. This will help the stakeholders' livelihood and nutritional security by having barren lands affected by saline water.