Azerbaijan, Baku, Feb. 8/ Trend M. Moezzi
For the first time, Iranian scientists have succeeded in producing farmed caviar from the Persian sturgeon the Iranian Students' News Agency reports.
Up till now researchers had been able to farm the valuable delicacy from six kinds of fish including Beluga, Russian sturgeon and Australian sturgeon.
Although 20 countries harvest farmed caviar, only Iran is producing it from Persian sturgeon. The lone fish is among the 27 recorded in the world bearing the country's name. Persian sturgeon is the world's second finest caviar, after Beluga.
The decision to produce caviar from farmed sturgeon is a sign of the Caspian Sea's on-going problems with pollution and over fishing and a response to the dwindling supply of the Caspian Sturgeon. The overfishing of sturgeon has driven the fish to the brink of extinction.
All species of sturgeon in the Caspian Sea, one of the oldest species of fish in existence estimated to be 250 million years old, are valued around the world for their precious roe are at risk of extermination making them the most threatened group of animals on (the International Union for Conservation of Nature) the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species