Experimental tenacibaculosis infection in adult conger eel (Genypterus chilensis, Guichenot 1948) by immersion challenge with Tenacibaculum dicentrarchi.

Keywords: challenge immersion method; red conger eel; tenacibaculosis EN challenge immersion method red conger eel tenacibaculosis 211 216 6 01/15/21 20210201 NES 210201 Chile has ranked second in salmonid production worldwide since 2010 (Ibieta et al., 2011; Soto et al., 2019), but global aquaculture is trending towards diversification, mainly by farming native species. The aim of this study was to establish whether red conger eel is susceptible and vulnerable to the emerging pathogen I T. dicentrarchi, i which might constitute a sanitary risk for the intensive farming of this fish species. The fish were also verified as not being carriers of and not infected by any Chilean pathogen (e.g. infectious salmon anaemia virus, infectious pancreatic necrosis virus, I Piscirickettsia salmonis i [Avendaño-Herrera, 2011] and pathogens reported in red conger eels [i.e. I Vibrio i spp.]). Our findings indicate that I T. dicentrarchi i QCR41 and QCR29 were pathogenic for adult red conger eels when immersed for 2 hr in an approximate concentration of 3.4 ± 0.3 x 10 SP 4 sp CFU/ml, one logarithm less than that used in Atlantic salmon (Avendaño-Herrera et al., 2016). [Extracted from the article]