Abstract:There are many food quality indices, such as carbon content, fat content, protein content, P.content, C and N ratio, RNA and DNA ratio and various amino acids content etc. In this study, five food quality indices including C/N, fat content, protein content, carbon content and dry matter content of six species of forage fish were calculated and ranked with the major component analysis method. The results showed that, according to the first major component which represented energy content of the organisms, quality of the six fish species ranked from high to low was: Japanese anchovy, tapertail anchovy, scaly hairfin anchovy, madura anchovy, lined cardinalfish and bighead croaker. The second major component represented nutrition of the organisms, and the ranking of the fish, from high to low was: scaly hairfin anchovy, tapertail anchovy, bighead croaker, madura anchovy, Japanese anchovy and lined cardinalfish. The integrated major components represented food quality, by which the ranking of the six organisms was: tapertail anchovy, scaly hairfin anchovy, Japanese anchovy, madura anchovy, lined cardinalfish and bighead croaker. It is suggested that single food quality index or one sort of food index could not fully represent food quality of the organisms.
