Tilapia farming plays a crucial role in the aquaculture sector of the Philippines. In terms of production quantity tilapia ranked as the 2nd farmed fish species in the country. The Philippines has seen a consistent increase in tilapia production, ranking it among the top tilapia-producing nations globally. However, as an archipelagic country with limited freshwater resources, tilapia production has stagnated and the only way for its expansion is to utilize high-salinity production areas for tilapia culture. Th e present study was conducted to evaluate the culture performance of saline-tolerant tilapia strains, developed in the Philippines, for cultivation in coastal seawater ponds.
A 90 -day rearing experiment was conducted to assess the growth, feed utilization, and survival of three different strains of saline tilapia including Brackishwater Enhanced Selected Tilapia (BEST) , Molobicus, a hybrid of ( O. nilotica X O.mossambica) , and Saline-tolerant Population of Improved Nile tilapia (SPIN) cultured a pond system with at a salinity range of 28-30ppt. Each of the tilapia strains was reared in triplicate ponds with a culture volume of 200 cubic meters. Juvenile fish with an initial weight of 2.04 g ± 0.2 (SE) were stocked at a density of 10 fry per cubic meter. The fish were fed a commercial diet containing 30% protein (4% of biomass). The findings indicated that the SPIN and BEST strains exhibited superior growth performance metrics (Final weight, Weight gain, Survival, Specific growth rate and lower feed conversion ratios compared to the Molobicus strain. There were no significant differences among the groups in terms of somatic indices (P˃0.05) or levels of body proteins and lipids . In conclusion, cultivating the UPV and BEST strains in saline water is recommended as they demonstrate optimal growth, feed efficiency, and survivability in this environment.