Effects of dietary Macsumsuk^® supplementation on growth performance, haematological parameters, disease resistance and body composition of juvenile Nile tilapia, Oreochromis niloticus L.

Abstract

An eight-week feeding trial was conducted to evaluate the effects of dietary Macsumsuk^® supplementation on growth performance, haematological parameters, disease resistance and body composition of juvenile Nile tilapia, Oreochromis niloticus. A total of 375 fish averaging 1.0 ± 0.05 g (mean ± SD) were randomly distributed into 15 tanks in groups of 25, and each tank was then randomly assigned to one of three replicates of five diets containing 0(M₀), 0.3(M_0.3), 0.6(M_0.6), 1.2(M_1.2) and 2.4(M_2.4)% dietary Macsumsuk^®. At the end of eight weeks of feeding trial, average weight gain (WG), specific growth rate (SGR), feed efficiency (FE) and protein efficiency ratio (PER) of fish fed M_1.2 diet were significantly higher than those fed M₀ diet (P < 0.05). Significantly higher values for haematological parameters, such as red blood cell (RBC), haemoglobin (Hb) and haematocrit (HCT), were obtained in fish fed M_0.6 diet compared to the fish offered M_2.4 diet. Although an analysis of variance (ANOVA) test suggested that the optimum level of dietary Macsumsuk^® in juvenile Nile tilapia, O. niloticus, could be 1.2%, broken-line analysis of WG indicated a level of 0.803% when Macsumsuk^® is used as the dietary feed additive.

Keywords:

• growth promoter
• body composition
• feed additive
• Edwardsiella tarda

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Korea Institute of Industrial Technology and partially by the Feeds and Foods Nutrition Research Center (FFNRC). Macsumsuk^® was kindly provided by Macsumsuk GM (Co., Ltd.).