Approximately, half a million people are involved in crude salt production in Bangladesh and the annual production reached 1.8 million metric tons. The salt farmers’ livelihoods are vulnerable due to increased operating costs for salt production without any market expansion or innovation, unstable salt production and price, low productivity of aquaculture in the salt farms during rainy season, the seasonal unemployment and climate induced hazards, for example flood, cyclone, erratic rainfall.
The EU-supported project “Artemia4Bangladesh” aims to improve the livelihood of the salt farmers in the Cox’s Bazar area by integrating their salt production with different forms of aquaculture in both the dry as well as the rainy season, with primary focus on the production of brine shrimp Artemia for its cysts and biomass as vital sources of food for the larviculture and nursery farming of crustaceans and fish. Apart from applications in aquaculture, Artemia can also be used for human consumption as it is highly nutritious in terms of protein and fatty acid content. In 2022, 20 farmers were successful in producing 1200 kg Artemia biomass and 13 kg of cysts in 4 ha water area in three months. Nutritional composition of Artemia biomass were crude protein 48.6%, crude fibre 2.4%, crude fat 6.9%, calcium 0.5%, phosphorous 0.2% on dry matter basis. Artemia cyst were 86% hatching rate and cyst diameter 238 µm. Artemia biomass were fed to Penaeus monodon post larvae and domesticated broodstock. Several Artemia recipes were developed as human food namely Artemia kebab, Artemia omelet, Artemia water spinach fritters. The recipes were tested among the salt farmer communities as well as aquaculture professionals. This opens a scope to apply Artemia as human food to tackle malnutrition particularly in the salt farmers communities. Now focus is on cyst production trials and the economic evaluation of this new integrated farming and use of Artemia in coastal salt ponds. Moreover, the excellent quality of cysts produced in Cox’s Bazar open up a bright future not only to fill the need of local aquaculture activities but also to contribute significantly to the huge demand of cysts in the global market. Successful trials in Cox’s Bazar on Artemia production will encourage the vast salt farming area in Bangladesh to apply the integrated Artemia-aquaculture-salt production system.