Reproductively Limited Grass Carp for Biological Control of Aquatic Weeds - Broodstock Production and Testing

摘要

The Chinese grass carp eats tremendous quantities of macrophytes and is thus a potentially valuable biological means of combating the escalating aquatic weed problem in the U.S., but stocking this exotic fish has not been widely accepted because of the fear of ecological repercussions should spawning and naturalization occur. The present approach to control unwanted reproduction has been to sex reverse female grass carp into functional males and use them in a breeding program that should produce only females which could be used in stocking for weed control. The two previous phases of this long-term study described the critical period of gonadal differentiation and developed an effective system for delivering the sex-reversing hormone and accomplished initial progeny testing to validate the basic hypothesis.