Assisted Reproductive Technologies in Fisheries

India is known as hotspot for fish diversity and harbor approximately 11% of the global fish species in its diversified aquatic resources. Despite

this, only few species are propagated through aquaculture. Nevertheless, there are several other commercially important fish species those could be

potentially considered as a candidate for aquaculture. However, because seed of such fish species are not available readily or they can not be

induced breed in captivity, attention was never given to introduce them in aquaculture. The assisted reproductive technologies, widely used in

mammals, could play an important role in such cases mainly to generate seed and make available them for aquaculture.

In teleost fishes, one of the most popular assisted reproductive technology used to produce seed is "Induced breeding by hormonal intervention". The success of this technology in Indian major carp has revolutionized the aquaculture sector. With the refinement of this technology, now seed of carp could be generated at wish. However, all the fish species do not spawn with the intervention of this technology. There are several endocrine and paracrine factors responsible for that, stress of confinement for example.

There are few other assisted reproductive technologies, those emerged recently, could be applied to generate seed from fish species those carry commercial value but, could not be propagated in captivity due to body size or do not spawn due to stress of confinement. In this book, various such assisted reproductive technologies are discussed like surrogacy, in vitro gametogenesis and stem cell based technology. It is expected that, the book will be helpful to the aquaculture industry, especially the seed producing units. Also, researchers and academicians will be greatly benefited from this book as the contents and protocols are explained in simple understandable language.