Hatchery seed production and cage farming of Tiger grouper Epinephelus fuscoguttatus (Forsskal 1775) in Andaman and Nicobar Islands, India

1678-1685Grouper fishes have been considered as commercially important candidate species for aquaculture. Among them, the Tiger grouper (Epinepheleus fuscoguttatus) is one of the most relished finfish that demands an excellent price in the fish markets of Southeast Asia. Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Aquaculture (RGCA), has launched a project on breeding, seed production and grow out farming of grouper at Andaman & Nicobar Islands (ANI). The project developed technology for breeding and grow-out farming of Tiger grouper, which is widely distributed in Andamans and also form a candidate species for captive breeding and sea cage culture. Its wild catches are extremely limited and insufficient to meet the huge market demands. Hence, development of a standard technology for the seed production of Tiger grouper is an imperative to boost the country’s export revenue. The paper presented here, is one such initiative by RGCA on seed production and cage culture of E. fuscoguttatus

Review of the cultivation program within the National Alliance for Advanced Biofuels and Bioproducts

The cultivation efforts within the National Alliance for Advanced Biofuels and Bioproducts (NAABB)were developed to provide four major goals for the consortium, which included biomass production for downstream experimentation, development of new assessment tools for cultivation, development of new cultivation reactor technologies, and development of methods for robust cultivation. The NAABB consortium test beds produced over 1500 kg of biomass for downstream processing. The biomass production included a number of model production strains, but also took into production some of the more promising strains found through the prospecting efforts of the consortium. Cultivation efforts at large scale are intensive and costly, therefore the consortium developed tools and models to assess the productivity of strains under various environmental conditions, at lab scale, and validated these against scaled outdoor production systems. Two new pond-based bioreactor designs were tested for their ability to minimize energy consumption while maintaining, and even exceeding, the productivity of algae cultivation compared to traditional systems. Also, molecular markers were developed for quality control and to facilitate detection of bacterial communities associated with cultivated algal species, including the Chlorella spp. pathogen, Vampirovibrio chlorellavorus,which was identified in at least two test site locations in Arizona and New Mexico. Finally, the consortium worked on understanding methods to utilize compromised municipal waste water streams for cultivation. This review provides an overview of the cultivation methods and tools developed by the NAABB consortium to produce algae biomass, in robust low energy systems, for biofuel production

Coral disease prevalence in the Palk Bay, Southeastern India – with special emphasis to black band

813-820Present study consists the details related to the nature of coral disease in nine locations from Vethalai to Rameswaram north in the Palk Bay. Among the overall corals 21% were affected by disease. Six disease types were documented. Black Band Disease (BBD) is high with 9.8% followed by white band (5.5%), white spot (2.2%), pink spot (1.9%), white plague (1.1%) and yellow band (0.6%). Eight coral genera were found to be affected wherein Acropora and Porites showed severe damage and the high prevalence of diseases. The coral genus, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">Porites was found to be affected by four different types of diseases. BBD affected colonies were tagged and photographed at regular intervals to quantify the progression rate in two coral genera, Acropora and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">Platygyra and the disease progression rate was 3 cm per month. White band disease was widespread and was found to affect exclusively Acropora sp. Corals like Symphylia sp. and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">Cyphastrea sp. in the Palk Bay were comparatively not affected by diseases. Total heterotrophic bacteria and pathogenic microbial forms in the reef environment were also examined in the present study

<smarttagtype namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" name="place"> Coral disease prevalence in Mandapam group of islands, Gulf of Mannar, Southeastern India </smarttagtype>

444-450 Assessment of coral disease prevalence was carried out in six islands in the northern region of the Gulf of Mannar during February 2007. Assessment was made in two sites in each island and three transects were laid in each site. white band, white plaque, white spot, pink spot, black spot, black band, yellow spot, yellow band and tumors were the observed common diseases in this regime. Overall coral disease prevalence was 8.9%. Prevalence was highest at Poomarichan Island (10.90%), followed by Manoli (9.38%), Pullivasal (9.28%), Hare (8.64%), Krusadai (8.27%) and Shingle (6.82%). Most common disease was pink spot in Porites sp followed by black band in Porites sp., Pocillopora sp., Favia sp., and Favites sp. Tumors were also observed in low frequencies in Acropora cytheria. Other affected species were Acrpora cytherea, Favia pallida and Goniastrea sp. Present study also consists the frequency of temperature anomalies, which can increase the susceptibility of corals to disease, leading to outbreaks where corals are abundant both in cover and diversity. </smarttagtype

Metagenomic analysis of microbial heterogeneity and stress response Mechanisms in Desert

Desert environments have high spatial heterogeneity evidenced by the occurrence of relatively low vegetation as small patches. Given the low vegetation cover, soil microorganisms are the main drivers of ecosystem processes in desert environments and thought to have unique stress-response and metabolic adaptation. Therefore, exploring the microbial spatial heterogeneity and metabolic adaptation is crucial for interpreting ecological patterns in the desert environment. In this study, we have evaluated the spatial heterogeneity of physicochemical parameters, soil microbial diversity and metabolic adaptation of microorganisms at meter scale. Soil samples were collected from two quadrates of 4x4 meter size from a desert environment (Bikaner, Thar Desert, India) which face hot arid climate with very little rainfall and extreme temperatures. Analysis of variance of the physicochemical parameters revealed that calcium and sulphate ions were the most important variables between the quadrates. Microbial diversity was studied using Illumina bar coded sequencing by targeting V3-V4 regions of 16S rDNA. As the results, 702504 high-quality sequence reads, assigned to 173 operational taxonomic units at the species level. The most abundant phyla in both quadrates were Actinobacteria, Proteobacteria, and Firmicutes. At the genus level, Gaiella was most abundant, followed by Streptomyces, Solirubrobacter, Aciditerrimonas, Geminicoccus, Geodermatophilus, Microvirga, and Rubrobacter. Between the quadrates, massive variation was found in the abundance of Aciditerrimonas (iron-reducing, moderately thermophilic), Geminicoccus (phototrophic), and Solirubrobacter. The automated metabolic functional mapping of abundant bacterial community revealed diverse activities, and correlated with physicochemical parameters of quadrates. For instance, relatively large numbers of bacteria were mapped with nitrogen and sulphur mineralizing activities in both quadrates. As the whole, there is a strong correlation between spatial variation of ions, microbial diversity and functional attributes in the studied quadrates, and patchy nature in local scale. Additionally, the relative abundance of Actinobacteria, a phylum with large number of industrially important bacterial species, in both quadrates suggests that the desert environment may be considered for bioprospection of bioactive natural products

Coral diseases are major contributors to coral mortality in Shingle Island, Gulf of Mannar, southeastern India

The present study reports coral mortality, driven primarily by coral diseases, around Shingle Island, Gulf of Mannar (GOM), Indian Ocean. In total, 2910 colonies were permanently monitored to assess the incidence of coral diseases and consequent mortality for 2 yr. Four types of lesions consistent with white band disease (WBD), black disease (BD), white plaque disease (WPD), and pink spot disease (PSD) were recorded from 4 coral genera: Montipora, Pocillopora, Acropora, and Porites. Porites were affected by 2 disease types, while the other 3 genera were affected by only 1 disease type. Overall disease prevalence increased from 8% (n = 233 colonies) to 41.9% (n = 1219) over the 2 yr study period. BD caused an unprecedented 100% mortality in Pocillopora, followed by 20.4 and 13.1% mortality from WBD in Montipora and Acropora, respectively. Mean disease progression rates of 0.8 +/- 1.0 and 0.6 +/- 0.5 cm mo(-1) over live coral colonies were observed for BD and WBD. Significant correlations between temperature and disease progression were observed for BD (r = 0.86, R-2 = 0.75, p < 0.001) and WBD (R-2 = 0.76, p < 0.001). This study revealed the increasing trend of disease prevalence and progression of disease over live coral in a relatively limited study area; further study should investigate the status of the entire coral reef in the GOM and the role of diseases in reef dynamics