M/s. Pidilite Industries Limited, Mumbai has sponsored a project entitled “Capacity building in Seaweed Farming of the Fishermen of Gujarat” under its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiative from July 2021 to July 2022. CSIR-CSMCRI was the implementation agency in building Public-Private Partnerships and handholding for skilling and imparting the training. This program was unique and the first of its kind in the seaweed farming domain along the Gujarat where coastal beneficiaries were given hands-on as well as lectures on site selection and preparation of farm, seeding, harvesting, post-processing as well as basic economic considerations. The entire project training was undertaken by the experts from the field and medium of instruction was Gujrathi.

India is gifted with its long coastline and apt climatic condition to cultivate seaweeds. Though most industries/laboratories in India need products based on seaweeds such as agar, alginate, and carrageenan, we as a country are still depend on importing some of these products. Our domestic need is much higher than our actual production. This directly forces us to spend more dollars on imports.

This gap in actual production and availability of raw seaweeds for processing also abstains us to enjoy the scale of economics in the processing industry and the underlying employment opportunities the industry could provide. The project leveraged to take this challenge and create the skilled manpower in seaweed cultivation domain from coastal Gujarat to encourage fishermen towards entrepreneurship in seaweed-related business.

The project undertook Six (6) sessions with an average of 30-50 fishermen per session. Around 300 fishermen from various districts of Gujarat have attended this training program. Around 71% of the participants who attended were women folks, which is so encouraging.

CSIR-CSMCRI thanks office bearers of Pidilite Industries for their social responsibility and concern in society towards nation building. We also thank and appreciate Dr. Vaibhav A. Mantri and his team for their tireless effort in organizing and successful completion of the project.