Freshwater Prawn Fauna of Bastar District, Chattisgarh, India

India , Thailand , China, Indonesia, Vietnam top the list of the freshwater prawn producing countries in Asia. Annually they produce 500,000 metric tons of freshwater prawns, valued at over $4 billion, while the global freshwater prawns family industry continues to expand, it is still small when compared to the marine shrimp industries. With nearly 438 known species from Indian subcontinent, the order decapoda comprising suborder dendrobranchiata and pleocymata. The suborder dendrobranchiata have 142 species under 43 genera and suborder pleocymata have 295 species under 88 genera. Further pleocymata have 3 infraorder of which Caridea is one of the infra order, Caridea comprises 10 superfamilies of which Palamonidae is one family which has most of the fresh water prawns. Majority of the freshwater prawns belongs to the 2 families namely, Atyidea and palamonidae which are represented by 118 species and 14 genera. Both families have majority of freshwater prawns. Genus Macrobrachium mainly comprises freshwater prawns living in inland waters. The present study has been carried out on the backlog collections of the National zoological collection of CZRC ZSI, Jabalpur. The study basically focused on freshwater prawns of Bastar district, which was found to be 3 species of one genera of one family