Production of salinity tolerant Nile tilapia, <i>Oreochromis niloticus</i> through traditional and modern breeding methods: II. Application of genetically modified breeding by introducing foreign DNA into fish gonads

Abstract

This study was conducted to produce a salinity tolerant Nile tilapia, Oreochromis niloticus through genetically modified breeding by introducing a fragmented purified DNA isolated from sea bream, Sparus aurata or Artemia, Artemia salina into the gonads. The results showed a significant
improvement (P . 0.05) in most of the growth performance and feed utilization parameters of genetically modified O. niloticus treated with sea bream-DNA and reared at different salinity levels up to 16 ppt compared to both genetically modified O. niloticus treated with Artemia-DNA and the control fish reared at the same salinity levels. Genetically modified O. niloticus treated with Artemia-DNA reared at 32 ppt, had displayed better traits results (P. 0.05) compared to the other fish within the same salinity level. Furthermore, genetically modified O. niloticus treated with sea bream-DNA showed a silver color covering all the body and no dark vertical bands. The results of the random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) fingerprinting showed highly genetic polymorphic percentage (35.95%) among fish receiving foreign DNA and their control using different random primers. The results of the present work suggested that, hyper-saline genetically modified O. niloticus with higher growth rate can be produced
using a feasible and fast methodology.

Key words: Salinity tolerance, Oreochromis niloticus, productive performance, genetically modified, DNA transfer.