Indian Major Carps H. Shivananda Murthy Department of Aquaculture, College of Fisheries, University of Agricultural Sciences, Mangalore 575002, India Introduction Indian major carps are commercially cultured in India and the Indian sub- continent; catla (Catla catla), rohu (Labeo rohita) and mrigal (Cirrhinus mrigala) are considered the three major carps of India. A few medium and minor carps that grow to an appreciable size are also being farmed in fresh water. Indian major carps are usually cultured together in ‘polyculture’ rather than monoculture. The principle behind this polyculture system is the utilization of all available natural food resources at different trophic levels to achieve maximum production per unit area of water body (Jhingran, 1991). Major carps are cultured not only in India but also in the entire Indian subcontinent, particularly Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Myanmar and other adjoining countries. Carp culture in India has a long history and can be traced back several centuries. Most of the farmed carps are marketed within the country for domestic consumption. In recent years, fillets, flakes and other value-added products of carps have been exported to Middle East countries. Surprisingly, carp production was not reported in the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) fish-production statistics until recently. In the past few years, Indian carp production has registered substantial increases. India is second in world carp production, next only to China. Of the 2 million t of aquaculture production of the country, a majority is from the farming of carps. Although Indian major carps are traditionally cultured in freshwater ponds, recently success has been achieved in culturing these species in brackish-water ponds (where penaeid shrimp were cultured) after gradual acclimatizaion to saline water (up to 15 parts per thousand salinity). Concerted research efforts were also made in nutrition, feed and feeding of Indian major carps, in addition to culture practices. ©CAB International 2002. Nutrient Requirements and Feeding of Finfish for Aquaculture 262 (eds C.D. Webster and C. Lim)