raipur after women selfhelp group in tribal bastar began trying to discover pearls in their backyard two years ago chhattisgarh department of fisheries has taken up fresh water pearl culture in another districthoping to involve more people and generate new employment opportunities to the farmersdeputy director fisheries dev kumar singh told toi that a jagdalpur based ngo started pearl culture in chhattisgarh and taught the art to a tribal women selfhelp group who are now practising small scale pearl culture for thelast two years now the fisheries department has undertaken initiative of pearl culture in janjgirchampa districtpearl culture is being practised by the jai maa santoshi women self help group of badepara village in jagdalpur of tribal bastar region of chhattisgarh under the guidance of monika sridhar for the last two years they have produced both round and designer pearlsspeaking about future possibilities in pearl culture singh said it has lot of potential in chhattisgarh as mussels used in pearl culture which ranges from 80100 mm length are found in abundance in many areas if the janjgirchampa project is successful pearl culture would be taken up in other parts of the statefisheries inspector sakti janjgirchampa vijay nirala told toi that pearl culture started about three months ago using over a 1000 freshwater mussels belonging to lamellidens marginalis and parreysia corrugata species which weigh around 2535 grams and are found in local ponds and riversthe complete process of pearl farming using 1000 shells costs around rs 25000 if a minimum 1000 designer pearls are obtained and sold in market ranging from rs 100150 a farmer can earn up to rs 150 lakh in 15 months he added describing the process he said when a foreign particle a designer image or nucleus are inserted inside mussel body it causes irritation the irritant is surrounded by epithelial cells of the mantle having special capacity of regenerating themselves this mantle epithelium secretes a coating of calcium carbonate called nacre which leads to formation of pearlafter insertion of foreign body the mussel is kept in knitted mesh bags and are hanged at the growing site it takes about 1015 months for completion of the procedure for designer pearls if survival rate persists to 50 per cent over a 1000 pearls could be obtained from the first harvest in the month of novdec he saidthe designer image of flower deity and alphabet designs used for production of designer pearls have been procured from a pearl farmer in maharashtrahe said that about 3000 designer image and round nuclei have been ordered and the batch of pearl culture will be started within a month round pearl production is a bit complicated process compared to designer ones the process requires surgical insertion of nucleus in the mussel body and the chances of survival are about 40 per cent it takes over two to 25 years for completion of whole processin the threeday long national agriculture fair which concluded here on tuesday the farmers were given demonstration on pearl