Agricultural productivities suffered a lot during recent past due to unexpected climatic changes, torrential rains, heat waves, drought and floods. Due to these mentioned constraints shortage of energy was one of the hurdles as well. It reflects that the nature is shifting its paradigm which is directly or indirectly danger to the agriculture production ultimately food security is at risk on this earth crust.


Due to above narrated uncertain climatic changes, number of issues has to be faced to humanity for coping up future dangers. Plant breeder responsibilities has enhanced much in order to develop varieties by prescribe parameters in changing the theme of crop production. Addition to above no. of threats to agriculture sector arise when developed nations use large amount of agrochemicals to get maximum productivity from crops. This action resulted soil and air pollution. Milk and meat is essential part of human diet, for this purpose raising of farm animals is inefficient in terms of land availability and energy requirements to raise fodder and other animal feed to meet the requirements of protein for huge masses.


The UNO report (2015) indicates that during previous eleven years, six times it happened that world produced less food as required. Present pace of rate of population, it is expected that the world will be having 9.3 billion in 2050, this will be an explosion, the average of quality land for crop productivity will be very few as accommodation requirements will cover most of the land. Than we must be shifting trends towards vegetarianism and option for protein source may be shifted to fish or aquaculture. It will take time, growing crops for feeding animals will expected to be covering most of the cultivated land. For intensive culture, greenhouse gases will be comparatively more resulting threat to flora and fauna.


Therefore, there is a need to promote a new “green” method of farming like aquaponics around the world for locally grown food in any region to produce healthier food that requires far less land and water, and at the same time, is environmentally friendly it will not only eliminate the need or use of artificial chemicals, will be producing sustainability in food security but also will reduce energy consumption in agriculture production, shipping offood, and greenhouse gas emissions etc. It will also create jobs thus helpful in strengthening the economy at local level.


Aquaponics has been explored for several decades as a possible solution to the foregoing environmental, energy and food shortage problems. Aquaponics combines the art of growing aquatic animals (fish), known as aquaculture, with the modern technology of hydroponics in which plants are grown without soil. The fish waste provides an organic food source for the growing plants and the plants provide a natural filter for the water the fish live in. The third participants are the microbes (nitrifying bacteria) and composting red worms that thrive in the growing media. They do the job of converting the ammonia from the fish waste first into nitrites, then into nitrates and the solids into vermicompost that are food for the plants. In aquaponics, fish and plants are grown together in an integrated closed loop re-circulating system with a very low percentage of water use efficiency or water loss due to evapotranspiration. The fish waste (effluent) produced by the fish is delivered from the fish tank to a settling tank to remove the heavy waste and then sent to the grow trays to provide a food source for growing plants in the gravel and the plants provide a natural filter for the water that keeps the fish healthy. This symbiotic relationship between the fish and the growing plants is the goal of aquaponics by creating a sustainable ecosystem in which both fish and plants can thrive consequently, produces safe, fresh protein and healthy vegetables.


In short aquaponics has number of merits and there are number of complexities in the installation of the system as it needs huge amount of capital and skillful labor availability. The construction of the system is also not easy and the maintenance of aqueous food requirements and disposal of waste will also be a great question mark as it is challenge to maintain pH of water, check micronutrients depletion and water temperature. These are pre requisite for struggling of survival for living entities. It will need extra powers and budgets for pumping fresh water and disposal of stagnant water. To cut the story short proper aquaponics system will be difficult to maintain and unfortunately, due to any reason collapsing and failure of the system will result death of fish and plants. Despite all these constraints and being positive the system can be established and work for better ecosystem and food security of masses in long run.

By Web Team

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