U.P’s first fish repository comes up in Lucknow
A National Fish Museum and Repository with a collection of 1,900 fish species from across India is set to open on April 14 in Lucknow on the campus of the ICAR-National Bureau of Fish Genetic Resources. The institute said it is the first fish museum and repository in the state and has the largest collection of preserved fish. The museum will feature finfish and shellfish voucher specimens of freshwater, marine, and brackish water environments, and will be open to researchers, students, teachers, scientists, and the general public.
Besides food and culture the City of Nawabs also has a presence of several state and central government-run scientific and research institutions.
Adding to those is a dedicated National Fish Museum and Repository ready to be opened in Lucknow which has a collection of around 1,900 fish species from across the country.
The museum is coming up on the campus of ICAR- National Bureau of Fish Genetic Resources (NBFGR) on its 52-acre campus in Telibagh that will be inaugurated on April 14 by ICAR director-general Himanshu Pathak.
According to the institute, it is the first such fish museum and repository in the state with the largest collection of preserved fish. The institute already has a live fish aquarium called ‘Ganga Aquarium’ on its campus, and a National Repository of Fish Cell lines, which is the world’s largest collection of fish cell lines with 81 cell line accessions.
“The newly developed museum will display finfish (a bony fish) and shellfish (fishes having a shell or shell-like exterior) voucher specimens of freshwater, marine, and brackish water environments for research and education of students, teachers, scientists, and the general public,” said U K Sarkar, director, NBFGR.
“The foundation stone of the museum was laid by Dr S Ayyappan, the then D-G ICAR, New Delhi in 2012. Since then, NBFGR has put in efforts to integrate different collections like vouchers, tissue, DNA, bacteria, cell lines, fish milt, etc. and provide valuable access to researchers ensuring wide dissemination for the benefit of the stakeholders.
“The museum holds specimens of 1,200 finfish species and 250 mollusks species found in India and has 19,000 tissue accessions belonging to commercial/prioritized fish species useful in retrieval of genetic information.
“The repository also has cryo-preserved fish sperm of 31 fish species that can be used to retrieve endangered species or artificial breeding of fishes,” he added.
