Temporal morphometric analyses of Pila globosa in India for its use in aquaculture and food industry

Background Although the apple snail Pila globosa is used as indicator species for human consumption locally and as fish feed, research on it in general is very scanty. It is used in food industry, in aquaculture as fish bait and used as food in many regions of India and many other countries, but research on it has been started in the 1970s. Only 40 articles are available on this organism in PubMed indicating an urgent need of basic research on it especially work on its spatiotemporal morphometry Therefore, sampling of P. globosa was done from different parts of India in different seasons (summer, winter and rainy), and different morphometric studies were performed on this organism to draw baseline information. Analysis was conducted to study morphometry, the relationship between shell length and the weight and relative condition factor of Indian apple snail Pila globosa collected from five zones (east, west, north, south and centre) of India during 2018–2019 year. Results The shell length (SL) (46.5 ± 13.33), shell width (SW) (40.22±11.5 mm), spire length (SPL) (2.99±0.15 mm), base length (BL) (12.53±2.94 mm), aperture length (AL) (21.95±4.36 mm), aperture width (AW) (2.74±0.47 mm) and shell weight (WT) (31.08±13.76 g) were observed to be varied among the individual sampled across India. Different relationships for SL/SW (Log SW=0.9889 Log SL + 0.9444), SL/SPL (Log SPL = 0.1452 Log SL+0.3815), SL/BL (Log BL=0.7789 Log SL+0.5814), SL/AL (Log AL= 0.6518 Log SL+0.9111) and SL/AW (Log AW=0.4475 Log SL+0.1422) were observed by considering shell length as basic index. The relationship between shell length and shell weight was found to be Log WT=2.0263 Log SL+0.1098. The relative condition factor revealed uninterrupted and good environmental condition observed for apple snails. A negative allometric growth pattern was observed from the length–weight relationship. Conclusion The environments of apple snail in India are not contaminated, and the results can be used as baseline data in aquaculture for model analysis and can be used as a reference for drawing relationship among different morphometric indices of P. globosa in India, as there is no such information available on it. The data can also be used for mass scale production of P. globosa for consumption by human and use in aquatic industries as fish feed.