Background:
The rainbow trout breeders and hatchery operators in the Indian uplands are facing various challenges related to brooder management, breeding and seed production. These include poor survival rate (25-50%) from fertilized eggs to swim-up fry stage and spawning failure due to asynchronous gonadal maturation. The main reasons behind these problems are inappropriate nutritional management and reproductive health of brooders. Timely availability of appropriate rainbow trout brooder feed to the hatchery owner is the only solution to overcome this problem. But at present, no specific brooder feed for rainbow trout is available in India:
Technology details:
Through a series of institutional farm experimentations and field evaluation studies, ICAR-DCFR has developed and validated a high-performance rainbow trout brooder feed formulation which consistently improved the gonadal development, synchrony in gonad development and maturational pattern, spawning capacity, fecundity, fertilization rate, larval development, and also exhibited uniformity in their development, especially at eyed ova formation, hatching and yolk sac absorption. The farmers who participated in field trials also reported similar responses, like improvement of spawning, seed quality, larval development, and improvement of growth and fitness of fry. This attempt on broodstock management through ICAR- DCFR formulated brooder feed has helped the rainbow trout hatchery operators to obtain superlatively robust seed production compared to earlier breeding cycles. Overall, this technology offers a high-performance rainbow trout brooder feed formulation and advisory for brooder feed management.