Catfishes are popular for their taste, less muscular spines, small gut, medicinal importance and some having air-breathing nature. They are preferred over other fish species due to high quality fillets making properties for meeting export demand. Around 3407 valid species of catfishes exist that share over 10% of global fish diversity. Catfish farming is popular in Vietnam, China, India, USA, Indonesia, Nigeria, Malaysia, Thailand and Bangladesh for meeting both home and export demand. The farming of catfish is expected to attain a growth of 72 % during 2009 (2.83 MMT) to 2018 (4.88 MMT). Striped catfish, Pangasianodon hypophthalamus remains the major contributor and production is estimated to touch 1.33 MMT mark during 2018. Vietnam is the largest producer of catfish at present followed by China, India and USA. The major contributing species are striped catfish, channel catfish (Ictalurus punctatus), Thai magur (Clarias gariepinus), bocourti-catfish (P. bocourti), which are extensively cultured in several other countries of their origin. Clarias batrachus, C. macrocephalus, C. magur, Heteropneustes fossilis, Ompok bimaculatus, O. pabda, Heterobranchus biodorsalis, Clarias nigro-digitalis, Pelteobagrus fulvidraco, Hemibagrus nemurus, Clarias X Heterobranchus hybrid, etc are the other species that also substantially contribute to this production in these countries.
The catfish diversity of India comprises of 197 species, however, catfish aquaculture production is largely shared by two exotic species P. hypophthalmus and C. gariepinus, surprising both of them are low cost exotic species but greatly adopted by the farming community probably due to faster growth rates and farmers' friendly husbandry. Though ICAR has developed and demonstrated the breeding, seed production and grow-out production technologies of high-valued indigenous catfishes such as M. cavasius, M. gulio, W. attu, O. bimaculatus, O. pabda, P. pangasius, C. magur, C. dussumeiri, H. fossilis, Horabagrus brachysoma, Rita chrysea, but these have not been able to attract wide-scale adoption at the farmers' end. This has limited high-value catfish farming in India in spite of large potential of water resources. The author in this communication has tried to address various constraints that are hindering wide-scale adoption of the technologies with respect to breeding, larval rearing, and grow-out production systems. The adoption of the technology will also open ways for intensive farming under flow-through and re-circulatory aquaculture system of farming, which have already begun at some places in the country. This will help the researchers and the farmers in developing new or refined culture practices for making technology more farmers'-friendly and commercially important.