Chief Minister Y. S. Rajasekhara Reddy will be chief guest while Sri Lankan Minister for Livestock RMCB Ratnayake, State Minister for Animal Husbandry Mandali Buddha Prasad and Minister for Major & Minor Irrigation Ponnala Lakshmaiah will be the guests of honour, reports Express News Service.

There will be no entry fee for visitors and a nominal fee will be collected from those intending to participate in the seminars.

Revealing this information at a press conference here today, AP Poultry Federation chairman K Narayana Reddy said the Indian poultry industry's annual turnover was about 400 billion rupees (INR).

"Andhra Pradesh leads other States in poultry output and accounts for a third of India's total output. Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra account for 70 per cent of the country's poultry production. Globally, India is ranked third in egg production and fourth in chicken production," he said.

"The aim of Indian poultry indus try is to catapult the country to the second position behind the United States," he added.

Anil Dhumal, president of IPEMA, said Poultry India-2008 would showcase the Indian poultry industry to people from abroad.

The daily production of eggs in India was 130 million, of which 2 million were exported directly while 20 million were processed and exported as egg powder.

Basic inputs such as corn and soya were in short supply, he regretted.

D. Sudhakar, a member of the National Egg Coordination Committee (NECC), said the endeavour is now to produce processed chicken rather than live birds, which would give India a toehold in the European market.

Only 7 per cent of the domestic output comprised processed chicken currently.

Saying that eggs and chicken were the cheapest sources of protein, he warned that the products would be more expensive if foreign multinationals dominated the Indian market, according to Express News Service.