Growth comparison of mono and mixed-sex giant freshwater prawn (Macrobrachium rosenbergii, De man) and stocking optimization of male monosex farming

Abstract

Most often male freshwater Prawn (Macrobrachium rosenbergii) exhibits higher growth compared to the female counterpart. The current study has been conducted to evaluate the production performance and the survival rate of mono-sex male freshwater prawn culture compared to mono-sex female and mixed-sex culture. Conjointly the study also appraises the production competence of mono-sex male M. rosenbergii at different stocking densities. The experiment was conducted in two different phases. The first experiment comprised of three treatments, viz. mono sex male (T 1), mono sex Female (T 2) and both male & female (T 3) with the same stocking density (3 in d/m 2) and maintaining the sex ratio 100% male and female for T 1 and T 2 , and 50:50 ratio for T 3. The second experiment was conducted with all-male prawn (100% male) with three different stockings densities (i.e. 1, 2 and 3 in d/m 2 successively as D 1 , D 2 and D 3). The results showed that in the first experiment, mono-sex males performed better growth, survival and production than mono-sex females and mixed-sex populations. In the second experiment, the highest individual growth was found to be 57.81±0.12 g in D 1 , 52.22±0.14 g in D 2 and 40.97±0.1g in D 3. Similarly, D 1 showed the highest survival compared to D 2 and D3. In contrast, the highest production (888.05±9.05 kg/ha) was found in D 2 , followed by D 3 (826±42.07 kg/ha) and D 1 (496.18±34.86 kg/ha). Hence, this research suggests practicing mono-sex male M. rosenbergii culture at stocking of 2/m 2 for accomplishing maximum profits.