Introduction: In the current practice of marine finfish aquaculture, broodstocks are stocked in tanks at varying ratios of female to male, which could result in use of too much tank area, feed and labour and failure in the mating of targeted female and males in selective breeding programs. In this study it is aimed to understand the success of sperm lavage method on fertilisation, hatching and larval survival rates on marine finfish culture and European seabass Dicentrarchus labrax, used as a model organism for investigation.
Method: Females were injected 30 µg/ kg BW LHRHa, single shot (600-650 µ oocyte size) in two experimental treatments including a control group representing a routine culture method and the second test group representing the novel method were tested in the study. In the novel examination group, the sperm collected from selected four males was inseminated to two female breeders 56 hours after hormone application (0.5 mL per ovarium per kg) (Müller et al. 2018) . The experiment was conducted in three replications . Eggs were collected , weighed and then placed in incubator tanks for hatching. Embryonic developments were checked separately in the cooled incubator at 14.5°C for 4 days (Panini et al 2001) . Hatching rates were checked in incubation tanks and larvae were distributed for larval rearing condition. Finally, larval survival rates were calculated after 28 days of larval wea ning. This study was funded by TÜBITAK 121N529.
Results: Viable eggs ratio, fertilization rate and hatching rate were higher in CG (68.41%, 81.14% and 42.92%) but not significantly different from EG (59.32%, 86.41% and 43.96%) (P>0.05). On the other hand, larval survivor was higher in EG (67.53%) than CG (53.2%) but not significantly (P>0.05).
Conclusion: The result from this novel method is promising. A high practicality of the technologies is a great white hope that will open new doors for the future in the aquaculture sector by reducing the costs of broodstock management, fostering much more successful selective breeding programs, solving propagation problems of many candidate freshwater and marine fish species and appearing an unexpected tool for hybridization of fish.
Literature :
Müller et al. 2018. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aquaculture.2017.09.025
Panini et al. 2001. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1014261830098