NCKU Professor Develops Real-Time Method to Monitor Grouper Disease
Tainan, Taiwan, July 29th, 2011
Tzong-Yueh Chen, the Chair of the Institute of Biotechnology at National Cheng Kung University (NCKU), has developed a real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) detection method to timely and accurately monitor virus inspection in grouper fish farming.
According to Tzong-Yueh Chen, grouper is the most valuable fish in Taiwan’s fish market but it often suffers from virus and leads to severe loss in fishery. The annual output of groupers in Taiwan is 17,000 tons, accounting for 23% of global production, but virus has caused a high mortality and a huge economic loss.
A distinctive feature of the real-time PCR method, which is 10 times more sensitive than conventional PCR, is the use of fin tissue as the virus detecting target organ where tissues can be sampled from the same fish.
“Without scarifying the test fish, like taking tissues out from its eye or brain, this method can be applied to precious fish which worth tens of thousands of dollars,” Tzong-Yueh Chen stated.
In an experiment of a 2-week monitoring on 24 grouper fish farms, the real-time PCR method had determined that the virus infection had spread to the entire population of affected farms in an hour.
The professor said the method should be extended and rooted to fish farmers to grasp the concept of disease surveillance. This will serve as an early warning mechanism alerting farmers to virus infection prior to an outbreak.
His research has been published in the Journal of Clinical Microbiology of the American Society for Microbiology in 2011 and is Taiwan’s first aquaculture paper to have been carried by this magazine.
Tzong-Yueh Chen, the Chair of the Institute of Biotechnology at National Cheng Kung University (NCKU), has developed a real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) detection method to timely and accurately monitor virus inspection in grouper fish farming.
According to Tzong-Yueh Chen, grouper is the most valuable fish in Taiwan’s fish market but it often suffers from virus and leads to severe loss in fishery. The annual output of groupers in Taiwan is 17,000 tons, accounting for 23% of global production, but virus has caused a high mortality and a huge economic loss.
A distinctive feature of the real-time PCR method, which is 10 times more sensitive than conventional PCR, is the use of fin tissue as the virus detecting target organ where tissues can be sampled from the same fish.
“Without scarifying the test fish, like taking tissues out from its eye or brain, this method can be applied to precious fish which worth tens of thousands of dollars,” Tzong-Yueh Chen stated.
In an experiment of a 2-week monitoring on 24 grouper fish farms, the real-time PCR method had determined that the virus infection had spread to the entire population of affected farms in an hour.
The professor said the method should be extended and rooted to fish farmers to grasp the concept of disease surveillance. This will serve as an early warning mechanism alerting farmers to virus infection prior to an outbreak.
His research has been published in the Journal of Clinical Microbiology of the American Society for Microbiology in 2011 and is Taiwan’s first aquaculture paper to have been carried by this magazine.
Click Num:
Share
