Improving biomass gain using crossbreeding of distinct farmed population of African catfish Clarias gariepinus
Ade Sunarma, Odang Carman, Muhammad Zairin Jr., Alimuddin
Department of Aquaculture, Faculty of Fisheries and Marine Science, Bogor Agricultural University, Dramaga Campus, Bogor 16680, West Java, Indonesia;
National Freshwater Aquaculture Center, Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries, Republic of Indonesia. Jalan Selabintana 37, Sukabumi 43114, Indonesia. Corresponding author:
Abstract
African catfish, Clarias gariepinus was introduced to Indonesia, firstly in 1985 and subsequently in 2002, 2005 and 2011, both as farmed and wild population. However, limited number of early parental and uncontrolled broodstock utilization led to deterioration of production performance. One possible method that can produce immediate improvement is crossbreeding between distinct introduced populations. The present study examined the performance and heterosis of crossbreeding of farmed African catfish. Three populations (the Indonesia, Netherlands and Thailand populations) were reciprocally crossbred to form three purebred and six crossbreed populations. Body weight, survival, biomass, feed conversion and growth rate were calculated at the nursing stage (81 days after hatching) and the grow-out stage (172 days after hatching). At the grow-out stage, the Netherlands female x Thailand male (NT) population achieved the highest biomass (22.59 kg) and body weight (241.39 g) and had a higher survival rate (93.67%). The NT population obtained the highest mid-parent heterosis on survival (19.71%) and biomass (52.31%) and the highest best-parent heterosis on biomass (25.34%) at the grow-out stage. These results emphasized the preference of the crossbreeding between separated population for enhancing of the production performance. Further studies and implication of our result to Clarias production in Indonesia are proposed.
AACL Bioflux 2017 10(5):1001-1010