Effect of papain supplemented diet on growth and survival of post -larvae of Macrobrachium rosenbergii

Abstract

The study was conducted to evaluate the effect of papain supplemented diet on growth and survival of postlarvae of Macrobrachium rosenbergii. The enzyme papain (LOBA CHEMIE PVT LTD., Bombay, INDIA) was supplemented at the rate of 0.1, 0.2, 0.3 and 0.4% in control diet containing 35% protein and served as experimental diet viz. T1, T2, T3 and T4. Diet without enzyme supplementation served as control diet viz. T0. The feeding experiment was conducted for 42 days rearing period following Complete Randomized Design (CRD) with four replicates for each treatment. Maximum length gain (18.36%), weight gain (81.15%) and Specific Growth Rate (1.41%) were observed inrnpost-larvae fed with T1 diet (0.1%) and it was found significantly different (P0.05) from T2, T3 and T4 diets. The maximum survival (59.33%) was observed for post-larvae fed with T1 diet and it was not significantly different (P>0.05) from the control and other experimental diets. The results of this feeding trial indicated that the 0.1% supplementation of papain to the diet resulted in better growth and feed utilization of post-larvae of M. rosenbergii.