Aquaculture America 2020

February 9 - 12, 2020

Honolulu, Hawaii

ENHANCING FRESHWATER PRAWN Macrobrachium rosenbergii LARVICULTURE WITH Centella asiatica

 Rasina Rasid,* and Monica ThiviaMalar
 
Faculty of Fisheries and Food Science,
Universiti Malaysia Terengganu (UMT),
21030 Kuala Terengganu,
Terengganu, Malaysia.
rasinarasid@gmail.com
 

Centella asiatica L. (Gotu Kola) is a green leafy vegetable commonly found in Asia and is gaining importance due to its high nutritional values and beneficial carotenoids. This study was done to investigate the potential of  C. asiatica as an enrichment in the diets of freshwater prawn, Macrobrachium rosenbergii , larvae to improve larviculture. Triplicate groups of  M. rosenbergii larvae (n=750 ) were fed different feeding formulation consisting of Artemia nauplii and egg custard. Enrichment of 100 ml of  C. asiatica extract were used in this study. C ontrol treatment were fed non-enriched diets of Artemia nauplii and egg custard, treatment B consisted of non-enriched Artemia nauplii and  C. asiatica enriched egg custard and treatment C consist of  C. asiatica enriched Artemia nauplii and egg custard. Larvae were fed three times a day at 0800 h (egg custard), 1300 h (egg custard) and 1700 h (Artemia nauplii ). All experi mental diets were tested at stage 4 larvae. The number of days for larvae to reach stage 4 for all treatment were comparable at day 6. Stage 5 to post larvae stage (stage 12) onwards , larvae fed comprehensive enriched diets were observed to metamorphosis rapidly compared to control treatment. Larval stage index (LSI) recorded more than 80% of freshwater prawn larvae metamorphosis to post larvae (PL) in treatment C at day 29 compared to control at day 35 (p<0.05). The survival was significantly improved (p<0.05) in larvae fed enriched diets where the highest mean survival was recorded for treatment C (67.9%) and the lowest in control (49.4%). The results demonstrate that supplementation of  C. asiatica in the diets of freshwater prawn larvae provided nutritional advantages and cost effective solutions by improving the larviculture period and survival, under the experimental conditions that were employed here.