In the health conscious era, consumers are looking for healthier food with low calorie. Fish is one of the nutritious foods accepted by the mankind with good source of protein. Development of technology which helps in producing healthy food by retaining the nutritional value of the fish is need of the hour. To preserve the fish without spoilage for longer duration and to popularize various technologies for producing value added fishery products such as extruded, Ready to Eat and Ready to cook fishery products, fish pickle, fish cake, salted and masala coated dry fish a “Metro Fish Processing Incubation Facility” was established at Keechankuppam Village in Nagapattinam District with the funding support from Tamil Nadu Government under the National Agricultural Development Project (NADP) scheme. The inaugural ceremony of “Metro Fish Processing Incubation Facility” a constituent unit of Department of Fish Process Engineering, College of Fisheries Engineering, Tamil Nadu Dr. J. Jayalaithaa Fisheries University, Nagapattinam was conducted on 25.10.2018. During the ceremony Dr. Nagore Meeran, Director, Extension Education, declared open the various fish processing facilities such as Cold chain facility, comprising of one chill room (2-4oC) of 10 tonnes capacity, two blast freezer (minus 40oC) of 0.5 tonnes capacity and Cold room (minus 20oC) of 20 tonnes capacity, Extrusion processing facility comprising of Twin screw extruder, Flavour coater and Automatic nitrogen fill packing machine, Fish pickle packing machine, Product testing laboratory, solar drying facility. Besides, the Director, Extension Education, launched ten value added fish products and distributed FSSAI and Incubate certificates to three Self Help Group members belongs to Keechankupam, Akkaraipettai and Nagore villages. He also distributed appreciation certificates to two entrepreneurs who have taken value added fish products marketing as their startup and released the manuals and brochures related to fish processing in the presence of Dr. S. Balasubramanian, Dean, College of Fisheries Engineering, Panangudi. The program was attended by officials from state and central government, Lead Bank Manager, Indian Overseas Bank, Nagapattinam, faculties of local colleges. In the afternoon during open day session more than 150 Self Group Members, 100 College students visited the established “Metro Fish Processing Incubation Facility” located at Keechankuppam Village. The Director, Extension Education, in his inaugural speech requested the peoples of Nagapattinam to utilize the state of the art facility for the upliftment of their livelihood. The program was arranged and co-ordinated by the faculties of Department of Fish Process Engineering.
