Efficiency of Dietary Turmeric on Growth Performance, Hematology and Survival Rate in Common Carp Cyprinus carpio Challenged with Flexibacter columnaris

Abstract

The present study was carried out to assess the effect of turmeric (curcoma longa) supplemented diet on growth performance, hematology and survival rate of Cyprinus carpio L. against the pathogenic bacteria Flexibacter columnaris. For this purpose, 180 common carp were used, 60 fish were used to determine LD50 and 120 fish were weighed and randomly distributed into six treatments (two replications for each treatment). Fish groups were fed six dissimilar diets up to 45 days, the first group was fed with 0.25% turmeric, the second group was fed supplemented with 0.5% turmeric, the third group was supplemented with 0.75% turmeric, the forth group was fed with 1% turmeric, the fifth group was supplemented with 1.25 % turmeric and the sixth group was served as the control group fed basal diet without supplementing with turmeric. After 45 days of feeding trail all fish in experimental groups were challenged intramuscularly with 0.2 ml F. columnaris at a concentration of 120 × 106 CFU/ml. after 45 day of feeding trail and post challenge the different parameters were determined including: growth performance, hematological parameters (WBC and RBC count, Hb content and PCV value) and survival rate were also determined. The obtained results showed that T5 was the best treatment followed by T4, T3, T2 and T1 respectively, which revealed a significant increase (P≤0.05) in comparison with the control group in all growth performance parameters (final weight, daily gain, SGR(%), relative growth rate, FCR and FCE%). RBC, HB and PCV% after 45 and 60 days (pre and post challenged with F. columnaris) revealed significant differences (P<0.05) in all experimental groups relative to the control group. In conclusion, our findings indicate that turmeric powder has improved the growth rate in C. carpio when challenged with F. columnaris. Also, addition of turmeric t into commercial feeds increased survival rate of carp fish challenged with a bacterial pathogen. This will be worth and useful for application in fish aquaculture.