Rome, Dushanbe, Tajikistan - Fisheries production in the Central Asian and Caucasus republics has "plummeted dramatically" in the years following the collapse of the Soviet Union, a UN food agency said Monday.

The crisis is topping the agenda when nine member nations of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) began meeting in Tajikistan on Monday

The Rome-based FAO estimates that between 1989 and 2006 annual inland fisheries and aquaculture production in Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan fell from between 60 to 72 per cent.

Tajikistan's production dropped 94 per cent, and Kyrgyzstan's 98 per cent, during the same period.