Growth and Immune Diversity of Haliotis discus hannai Juvenile Abalone with Different Egg Colors

Abstract:

The rapid development of abalone aquaculture has been accompanied by serious problems such as massive mortality that has caused huge economic losses. Therefore, it is an urgent mission to perform the immunological studies, to analyze the causes of death, and to find an effective disease prevention method. In this study, 100 16-month old abalone were randomly sampled as experimental materials, all of which were from green egg full-sib family 3♀ × 10♂ of Haliotis discus hannai. We divided the samples according to their sexes and egg colors, and then measured their growth traits (the total weight, the shell length, and the shell width) and activities of five enzymes including superoxide dismutase (SOD), alkaline phosphatase (AKP), acid phosphatase (ACP), catalase from Micrococcus lysodeikticus (CAT), and lysozyme (LZM). The single-factor analysis of variance was performed in this study. We found that there was no significant difference in the growth between individuals with different egg colors (P>0.05), and that green egg samples displayed a better growth performance. As for immune enzyme activities, there was no difference in SOD and CAT between the four egg color groups. The activities of AKP, ACP, and LZM in the green egg samples were significantly different from those in the brown and brownish red egg samples (P<0.05), but they were not different from those of breen egg samples. The enzyme activities in different egg color samples followed the order green>breen>brown> brownish red. Our results will provide guidelines for the egg color breeding of highly productive and resistant strain of H. discus hannai.