Comparative study on growth and vibrio variation between normal and stunted growth in pond- cultured whiteleg shrimp, litopenaeus vannamei

• Main Author: Rocelene Veraann Rukimin
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English; English
• Published: 2022
• Subjects: QK504-(638) Cryptogams
• Online Access: https://eprints.ums.edu.my/id/eprint/40515/1/24%20PAGES.pdf; https://eprints.ums.edu.my/id/eprint/40515/2/FULLTEXT.pdf; https://eprints.ums.edu.my/id/eprint/40515/
• Institution: Universiti Malaysia Sabah

The occurrence of stunted growth in Litopenaues vannamei culture causing large size variation in harvested shrimps which may lead to huge profit loss. Despite causing concerns to farmers, detailed information of stunted growth in L. vannamei in relationship to its growth and Vibrio composition was limited. Normal and stunted growth shrimp were collected from shrimp ponds in Tuaran, Malaysia. Further investigation of the length-weight relationship and Vibrio variation between normal and stunted growth shrimp were conducted. Statistical analysis showed that size variations were present in all age groups between normal shrimps and stunted shrimps. The relationship between the length and weight was calculated using the equation W = aLb. The regression coefficient (b value) for normal shrimp was 2.92 which not significantly less than 3.00 indicating isometric growth pattern. Meanwhile, positive allometric growth pattern was observed in stunted growth shrimp with b value of 3.41. The coefficient of correlation (r value) of normal shrimp and stunted shrimp was 0.95 and 0.94, respectively. No significant difference was found regarding the total bacteria count and the total Vibrio count between normal and stunted growth shrimp. However, the tests result revealed that Vibrio isolates obtained from stunted shrimp showed higher variation of phenotypic characteristics compared to isolates from normal shrimp. The finding in this study also indicates that stunted growth shrimp might have more diverse and complex bacterial variation than the normal shrimp. This present study managed to provide information on the size difference and length-weight relationship of normal and stunted growth L. vannamei. Therefore, this opens up the opportunity to conduct more research to find out the possible cause of stunted shrimp problems.