EARLY BREEDING OF INDIAN MAJOR CARPS USING CIFABROOD™ IN SOUTHERN STATE OF INDIA

An experimental trial was undertaken for early breeding of Indian major carps in the Chola Fish seed Farm, a private hatchery of Thiruvarur district in the state of Tamil Nadu, India.  CIFABROOD^TM a carp brood diet developed by ICAR-CIFA was used to evaluate the breeding performance and seed production of catla and rohu during summer before the early monsoon.  Normally, carps are bred from June onwards which continue up to November in the state of Tamil Nadu.  CIFABROOD^TM was provided as feed for catla and rohu broodstock @ 2% of body weight in experimental ponds for 20 days while farm made feed prepared by the hatchery owner was used in control ponds.  Both rohu and catla were matured and bred successfully in April-May 2016 at an ambient temperature of 37^oC and water temperature 32^oC in the absence of rain or shower. Rohu was bred first in April, followed by catla in May using WOVA-FH as inducing agent. The dosage was 0.4ml and 0.3ml/kg body weight for female and male respectively. The broods in control ponds were still immature and no breeding operation could be taken up.  The incubation time for spawning response following the WOVA - FH injection was reduced to 6 hrs in case of CIFABROOD^TM fed broods in place of 9 hrs generally observed.  The details of the catla and rohu brood fish, number of females and males used for breeding, fertilization rate, number of spawn produced, and spawn recovery after 72 hrs were presented in Table 1. When compared with normal feed the spawn recovery was 20% increase in the CIFABROOD^TM fed carps. Quality of the seed is good as compared to normal.