Abstract
BackgroundDespite the favorable geo-climatic potential of Cameroon, the national production of tilapia remains low due to poor tilapia growth reported by fish farmers. One of the underlying reasons is the early female maturation at a very small size and precocious breeding in earthen ponds, resulting in overpopulation which leads to stunted growth and therefore to the production of unmarketable fish size. Studies have shown that dietary supplementation of G. kola enhanced growth in young Clarias gariepinus and Oreochromis niloticus. It was also reported that G. kola inhibited spawning in Tilapia adult females. Therefore, this study sought to assess the effects of Garcinia kola as growth promoter and inhibitor of gonadal development in young Oreochromis niloticus.MethodsA total of 108 juveniles weighing 13.32 ± 0.62 g were randomly distributed in 9 hapas of 12 fishes each (9 females and 3 males) and fed for 70 days with three isonitrogenous diets, 40% crude protein with increasing Garcinia kola supplementation levels of 0 (normal diet), 6% and 10% (experimental diets). Physico-chemical parameters of the water (temperature, dissolved oxygen, pH, nitrate, nitrite, ammonia, and transparency) were measured twice a week. Every 14 days, fish were harvested, counted, and weighed. At the end of the experiment, three fish of each sex per replicate were sacrificed and their gonad and liver collected and weighed. Data were statistically analyzed using one-way analysis of variance repeated measure followed by Newman-Keuls multiple tests.ResultsThe results showed that all physico-chemical parameters of the water were within the recommended values for Tilapia culture. Tilapia fed 6% Garcinia kola supplemented diet displayed higher final body weight in males (38.60 ± 3.50 g) and females (36.77 ± 3.62 g) compared to those receiving normal diet (36.23 ± 1.36 g and 25.87 ± 3.32 g; respectively to the final body weight in males and females). The gonadosomatic index and hepatosomatic index indicated no significant variation in males while in females, these were significantly low in the experimental fish compared to control fish.ConclusionThe results of this study demonstrated that supplementation of G. kola seeds in diets of young Tilapia improved growth performance and impaired gonadal development in females.
Highlights
Despite the favorable geo-climatic potential of Cameroon, the national production of tilapia remains low due to poor tilapia growth reported by fish farmers
One of the major drawbacks to tilapia culture is the early female maturation at very small size (15–30 g) (Mair and Little, 1991; Popma and Lovshin, 1995), and precocious breeding in earthen ponds resulting in overpopulation which often leads to stunted growth
At the end of sampling, fish fed with diet supplemented with 6% of G. kola presented a weight gain of 19.46 ± 1.31 g, which was significantly (p < 0.05) higher by 17.68% and 32.58% compared to that in fish fed with the normal diet (16.02 ± 1.55 g) and diet supplemented with 10% G. kola (13.12 ± 1.58 g) respectively (Fig. 1a)
Summary
Despite the favorable geo-climatic potential of Cameroon, the national production of tilapia remains low due to poor tilapia growth reported by fish farmers. Considering the problem associated with the use of androgenous hormonal treatment, such as environmental and public health concerns and the limitations of existing methods and techniques documented by Mair and Little (1991), there is a need to explore other technologies to control undesirable tilapia recruitment in ponds using natural reproduction inhibitors found in plants to enhance better growth and improved flesh (Jegede, 2010). Studies on Oreochromis niloticus have shown that dietary supplementation of G. kola seeds powder promotes the growth performance. The present work was undertaken to evaluate the effect of dietary supplementation of Garcinia kola seed powder on growth performances and gonadal development of Oreochromis niloticus juveniles
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