2020-07-09 11:45:00

The consequence of global warming is that the proliferation of aquatic vegetation in the irrigation canals, backwaters, horseshoe-lakes, fishponds, sport fishing ponds etc.  has accelerated sharply compared to previously experienced. This is unpleasant not just for human activities e.g. aquaculture, sport fishing, or irrigation, but it also causes serious difficulties for many fish or other species that used to live there.

The real herbivorous (plant eating) fish is the grass carp, which is able to repel proliferating aquatic vegetation. It does not reproduce in stagnant water, but there is a chance for natural reproduction in some of our large warming rivers. There are also reliable observations about this. However, its overgrowth in our natural waters - which fortunately has not happened in Hungary so far - would adversely affect the ecological balance of the species living there.
Decades of research have shown that a genetic process, with special treatment for fertilized eggs, can create grass carps that receive twice as many chromosomes from their mother as from their father. These variants are called triploids. Triploids grow nearly as well as their normal species counterparts and consume aquatic plants in line with them but are unable to reproduce. By stocking a professionally justified number of such grass carp, the overgrown aquatic vegetation of irrigation canals, sport fishing and fishponds can be biologically controlled so that the desired vegetation cover is maintained. Today, only such triploid grass carps are allowed in almost all U.S. states. Authorization is based on an official inspection according to a precisely prescribed protocol. 

With the implementation of a two-and-a-half-year R&D project entitled “Development of Intensive Amur Cultivation Technology for Triploid Stocks”, with the identification number GINOP-2.1.7-15-2016-01630, we managed to carry out technological optimization at Aranyponty Ltd. to create stocks of triploid individuals and raise them in an intensive manner. The degree of ploidy of these stocks, which is an indicator of reproductive capacity, can be characterized by a new method, much earlier than in previous methods, even at the embryonic stage. At least one-year-old grass carps to be released into the water are graded individually on the basis of a blood sample.