• Title
    Quality Descriptors and Predictors in Farmed Marine Fish Larvae and Juveniles
  • Book chapter
  • Authors
    Giorgos Koumoundouros, Enric Gisbert, Ignacio Fernández Monzón, Elsa Cabrita, Jorge Galindo-Villegas, Luís E. C. Conceição
  • Abstract
    During the early ontogeny of fish a variety of characteristics are determined as a response to environmental conditions and genetic background. As a lot of these characters are directly or indirectly related with the quality of on-growing fish, there is an urgent need to develop appropriate indices for the description and prediction of fish quality. To allow their use at both the research and the hatchery level, such indices should estimate quality at the earliest possible ontogenetic stage, with high accuracy and precision, with fast and simple methodology, but with a low cost of application. In the present chapter we summarise the existing knowledge on the development and use of quality indices for the morphology and skeletal development, gamete quality, growth potential, nutritional and immunological condition of reared fish. The current and future possible use of these quality descriptors as early predictors of juvenile quality is also discussed. Currently, available precise indices are few and limited to the prediction of fish quality in terms of some aspects of morphology alone. Existing literature clearly suggests that the development of indices for the prediction of fish quality in terms of normal ontogeny, growth potential, immune and nutritional condition is possible in future, by exploiting the rapidly growing knowledge on the developmental mechanisms of the early life stages. However, this will require a concerted R&D effort from researchers and producers, focusing on the validation of such indices at the commercial scale. Still, this quality assessment needs to be relatively simple and at a reasonable cost so it can be routinely applied in fish farms. Probably such a set of practical quality indices with predicting power should include a combination of morphology characteristics and molecular descriptors.

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