Breeding strategy of US farm-raised channel catfish, Ictalurus punctatus affects progeny production and performance

Authors: Chatakondi, Nagaraj

Submitted to: Aquaculture America Conference
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: 12/16/2013
Publication Date: 2/9/2014
Citation: Chatakondi, N.G. 2014. Breeding strategy of US farm-raised channel catfish, Ictalurus punctatus affects progeny production and performance. Aquaculture America Conference. P.71.

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: catfish propagation for decades has been dependent on random mating of male and female channel catfish in ponds. It is simple and has been fairly successful in fulfilling the needs of the US farm-raised catfish industry. However, natural pond spawning is unreliable, unpredictable, and incurs 30 to 50% losses from fry to food fish stage in catfish ponds. Broodfish are held in the same pond for 3 or 4 years in a farm; a portion of the progeny serve as future brood fish. It was recently known that only 10 percent of the males present in the pond participate in the mating process to produce spawns annually. All these factors are suggestive of possible inbreeding depression occurring in naturally spawned channel catfish. It is known that inbreeding depression reduces the mean phenotypes connected with reproductive capacity and or physiological efficiency in fish. It was hypothesized that randomly bred channel catfish naturally in ponds may have reduced genetic variability and appears to be less fit, hence prone to stress and disease conditions under pond conditions. Three breeding strategies of channel catfish: natural pond spawning of channel catfish (NPS-Ch), hormone-induced half-sib channel catfish (HI-Ch), and half-sib hybrid catfish (Hi-Hy) families were compared for performance traits. Growth traits did not differ among the three genotypes (Table 1). Survival of selectively bred (Hi-Hy and Hi Ch) families subject to ESC disease challenge were lower (P<0.05) than NPS-Ch (randomly bred) families. Stress tolerance (measured as plasma cortisol response to low dissolved oxygen stress) in Hi-Hy and Hi-Ch families was lower (P<0.05) than NPS-Ch progeny families. Effects of control of reproduction to improve the efficiency of US farm-raised catfish production will be discussed.