Effect of Astragalus on growth performance and muscle components of Ictalurus punctatus.

The experiment was to study the effect of Astragalus on growth performance and muscle nutritional components of I. punctatus. A total of 600 I. punctatus with the body weight of (56.40 ± 1.60) g were randomly divided into four groups (G0, G1, G2 and G3 groups), with three replicates in each group and 50 fish in each replicate. The fish were fed with different proportions of Astragalus (0, 1%, 2% and .3%), respectively. The experiment lasted for 48 d. The results showed that WGR and SGR of I. punctatus in test groups were significantly higher than those in control group (P<0.05), the fatness of I. punctatus in group G2, group G3 were significantly higher than that in control group (P<0.05). The muscle crude protein content in muscle of test groups adding Astragalus was significantly higher than that of control group (P<0.05), the crude fat content in muscle of group G2, G3 were significantly higher than that in control group (P<0.05). The experiment indicates that Astragalus can effectively improve the growth performance and muscle quality of fish by adding basic feed of I. punctatus, which is recommended to add 2% of Astragalus to achieve better results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]