Collaboration for Agriculture and Rural Development
(CARD)
Program
26
COMPARATIVE GROWTH PERFORMANCE OF COMMON CARP
STRAINS IN UPLAND SMALL SCALE AQUACULTURE
Project title:
Better Breeds of Common carp (
Cyprinus carpio
L.) for Small
-
scale Fish Farmers
Project c
ode
:
CARD
002/0
4 VIE
Author(s):
Pham Anh Tuan
1
, Le Quang Hung
1
and Christopher M Austin
2
Project Implementing organisations:
1
Research Institute for Aquaculture No 1, Bac Ninh, Vietnam
2
School of Science and Primary Industries, Charles Darwin University, Australia
S

fertilization from organic material such as
bran, agriculture by
-
products and household
wastes to high intensive culture system with
high stocking densities and the use of
manufactured fish foods. Semi
-
intensive
culture systems are the most popular in
Vietnam using ponds or a combination of
ponds and rice field cultivat
ion
(Austin et al.,
2007)
.
In Vietnam there are many different local
varieties of common carp that have been used
by farmers but they usually have small size
and low growth rate
(Thie
n, 1983)
. Over recent
times the Research Institute for Aquaculture
No.1 (RIA
-
I) has bred genetically improved
common carp strains to enhance the
productivity of small scale fish farms that
utilise this species. This program has used

project included those using both pond and rice
field culture from mostly highland
environments.
CARD 002/04 VIE
–
B
etter Common Carp Breeds for
F
armers
27
2.
Research contents and methods
2.1.
Experimental Design
The experiment were scaled up to include 40
separ
ate farmers and four strains. The majority
(34) of farmers used ponds as their culture
systems with six farmers using rice field
systems, which reflects the proportion of these
different farming systems in these provinces
based on the socio
-
economic survey
. Farms
were classified according to their levels of feed
inputs as either high or low to determine if this
important management aspect influenced the
relative performance of the different carp
strains. Farmers who did not provide food

raised in 200l upwelling incubators. After 4
-
5
days when larvae had reached 8
-
12 mm they
were transferred to four ponds and stocked at a
rate of 100 larva
e/m
2
and grown for a period of
two months. Every effort was made to keep the
conditions under which the fry and fingerlings
of each strain were raised as similar as
possible, especially in relation to stocking
density and feeding regime. When the
fingerlin
gs had reached of 3
-
5g, they were
tagged by using Coded Wire Tag (CWT). The
strains of common carp lines were marked by
placing the CWTs on different locations on the
body. The tagged fish were stocked into 40
ponds or pond
-
rice field systems over a two
da
y period. Communally stocked fish were in
equal proportions of fingerlings. Each farm

were allocated to strain based on the
identification of the posi
tion of the CWT using
a detector scanner (North West Marine
technology, Shaw Island, WA, American). To
compare growth between strains, fish weights
were converted to daily growth rate (DGR)
after first subtracting the mean fingerling
weight for that strain
.
Percentage of recovered fish and harvested fish
biomass of each common carp strain were
analyzed as ANOVA. All analyses were
conducted using the Excel and SPSS software
packages.
3.
R
esults and discussions
3.1
Growth and survival of HP3 and LOC
st
rains and effects of feed input
Growth rate for the HP3 and LOC strains were
compared in 18 farms which included both low
and high feed input systems. Significant
differences were observed for all factors and
for the interaction between production systems
and strain (Table 1) (P<0.01). The mean daily
growth rate of HP3 strain (0.48g) was 60%
higher than that of local strain (LOC) (0.30g).

0.00
0.50
1.00
1.50
2.00
2.50
3.00
Luat
Ha
Ke
Vinh
Tuan
Lieu
Dieu
Que
Lich
Lien
Hom
Nhan
Thong
Thuan
Truong
Hoan
Tap
Chung
Farm
DRG (g)
HP3
LOC
Low feeding rate

Std
Min
Max
Low
28
21.29
a
0.86
11.72
29.33
High
8
32.44
b
6.31
14.17
62.00
Total
36
26.90
a
3.58
12.95
45.67
3.
2
Growth rate and survival of HP3,
H3B a
nd LOC strains
Growth data from three strains, HP3, H3B and

1.90
H3B
282
0.26
b
0.27
0.04
1.51
LOC
256
0.23
c
0.23
0.02
1.05
Total
839
0.27
d
0.28
0.03
1.49
Fig
2
.
Example of relative growth of three
strains of common carp in rice
field in Yen Bai
0.000
0.200

difference between farms, while survival r
ate
between common carp strains was not different
. The average survival rate of HP3, H3B and
LOC was 24.28%, 25.78%, and 23.45%
respectively.
3.
3
Growth rate and survival for HP3,
VNW and LOC Strains
Growth data from three strains, HP3, VNW
and LOC we
re compared in 5 farms which
included 4 low and 1 high feed input systems.
Significant differences were observed for both
strain and farmer factors as presented Figure 4.
While the effect of production system could
not be tested statistically due to lack o
f
replicates for this effect and the differences
between strains and farms can be seen from
Figure 4. Each strain was significantly
different on the basis of Tukey’s test with
HP3>VNW>LOC.
The results of the survival rate of three
common carp strains (HP3
, VNW and LOC)
showed no significant differences between
farms. Although survival rate of HP3 was the
highest (20.57%) there had no significant

feed input
Growth data from all four strains, HP3, H3B,
VNW and LOC were compared in 3 low input
farms in which they were rai
sed communally.
Significant differences were observed for both
strain and farmer. Post hoc tests indicated
significant differences among strains with HP3
> H3B = VIET > LOC. Daily growth rate of
each strain and farm are presented in Fig 5.
0.00
0.05
0.10
0.15
0.20
0.25
0.30
0.35
0.40
Lien
Ha
Nhan
Farm
D R G ( g )
HP3
H3B
VNW
LOC
Fig.5.
Dail

growth rate of 0.06 grams per day, where as in
high input systems the average difference in
growth rate was 0.34 grams per day.
Very large difference in growth, survival and
biomass product
ion were apparent between
farms. The
difference in daily growth rate
between farms was much greater than between
strains. The best performing farm had from a
31 and 12.6 fold difference in growth rate for
the LOC and HP3 strains respectively. A
significant
factor explaining these differences
can be attributed to feed input but it is likely
that other environmental and husbandry
aspects contribute to these very substantial
differences.
Acknowledgement
Many people contributed to the success of the
on
-
farm t
rail to compare growth performance
of common carp strains conduced in farmers’
ponds and rice fields in Thai Nguyen and Yen
Bai province as part of CARD project
002/04VIE. The project was given significant
support from the Provincial Fisheries Centers
of T

hai, B. T., A. T. Pham and C. M. Austin.
2006. Genetic diversity of common carp
in Vietnam using direct sequencing and
SSCP analysis of the mitochondrial DNA
control region. Aquaculture 258: 228
-
240.
4.
Thai, T. B. and G. T. Ngo. 2004. Use of
pineapple juice
for elumination of egg
stickiness of common carp (
Cyprinus
carpio
L.). Asian Fisheries Science 17:
159
-
162.
5.
Tran Mai Thien. and Nguyen Cong
Thang. 1992. Selection of common carp
(
Cyprinus carpio
, L) in Vietnam.
Selection of research works (1988
-
1992). Ag
riculture Publisher House,
Hanoi (
In Vietnamese