By Nwangwu, D.C, Bake G.G, Orire A.M, Ibiyo L.M.O, Yisa M.
Publisher : Iterative International Publishers (IIP Series)
Futuristic Trends in Agriculture Engineering & Food Sciences
Volume 3, Book 14, Part 1, Chapter 1 (2024)
Abstract:
The study investigated the control of prolific reproduction in Oreochromis niloticus culture using Jatropha curcas seed meal (JCSM). A total of 360 Oreochromis niloticus juveniles were used for the study in a 6 x 3 completely randomized design, using six dietary treatments (D1, D2, D3, D4, D5 and D6) with varied inclusion levels of treated and raw JCSM as control. The study indicated significant differences (p<0.05) for both processed (toasted and soaked) and raw Jatropha curcas seed meal on the reproduction of O. niloticus. The treated and raw JCSM at 10% and 20% inclusions suppressed reproduction in Oreochromis niloticus juvenile for 12 weeks. The best reproduction control was observed at 10% inclusions for toasted and soaked JCSM with the soaked group performing better than the toasted group. The highest significant (p<0.05) growth performance of juvenile O.niloticus with respect to final body weight (FBW), mean weight gain (MWG) and specific growth rate (SGR) (54.01g, 42.44g and 4.38% day-1 fish-1 respectively) were observed in the fish fed control diet (D1). The group of fish fed with 10% soaked JCSM (D4) diet performed significantly (P<0.05) better than other treatments. The best feed utilization efficiency of the fish in terms of feed conversion ratio (FCR) and feed efficiency ratio (FE) were observed in the control treatment (D1) and D4 (10% soaked JCSM) with 2.38 and 3.35 for FCR, 0.42 and 0.30 for FE respectively. Using Kvalue of FCF the study inferred that the wellbeing of the fishes fed control diets (D1), 10% (D4) and 20% (D5) soaked Jatropha curcas seed meal were intact while fishes in other groups; 10% (D2) and 20% (D3) toasted Jatropha curcas seed meal and 10% (D6) raw Jatropha curcas seed meal wereimpaired but the survival rate (SR) of all the treatments were not significantly different (p>0.05). The control group (D1) had the highest value (55.40 x 106) of white blood cells (WBC) and the least value (26.16 x106) was recorded from the group fed unprocessed JCSM. From the study, it can be concluded that 10% and 20% inclusion levels of processed and unprocessed JCSM suppressed reproduction in Oreochromis niloticus juvenile for 12 weeks which also adversely affected their growth performance and nutrient utilization, hence lower inclusion levels of JCSM, other methods of processing of Jatropha curcas and other phytoestrogenic plants should be investigated.
