New Delhi, Feb 17 (Bureau) Chitosan’s world market is poised to grow annually by 12 per cent from the current size of 10.88 billion US dollars to $47.06 billion by 2030, an expert at the India International Seafood Show (IISS) said on Friday. Sensing a “huge opportunity” awaiting the country in this field, LongShore Technologies founder Amey Naik pointed out that India is a major player in the market of chitosan, a chemical substance taken from the shells of sea creatures. The top competitors are the US, Canada, Japan, France, China, Germany and Vietnam. India’s production of chitosan is localised, with its main application in agriculture, pharma, waste water treatment, cosmetics, animal and aquafeed sectors, he revealed, speaking on ‘Startup Initiatives in Product Diversification/Path breaking Technology for Seafood Industry’ at the February 15-17 event organised by Marine Products Export Development Authority, in association with the Seafood Exporters Association of India.
“Chitosan can also be used for making end-use products such as plant growth booster, which is a solution with chitosan and some organic acids, for increasing overall yield of vegetative crops,” he noted at a technical session of IISS 2023 at Biswa Bangla Convention Centre. According to Naik, one benefit of biotechnology based chitosan manufacturing process was that it required 83 per cent less water requirement than the conventional one. “Moreover, 95 per cent of the total input material is used and only five per cent is lost in the process or treated as effluents. Significantly, the protein recovered from the process has pepsin (chief digestive enzyme in the stomach) which has a digestibility of more than 90 per cent,” said the speaker, whose firm is based in Gandhinagar, Gujarat. The biotechnology process requires 90 per cent less acid and 70 per cent less alkali, compared to the conventional process, he added.