Impact of Dietary Rocket (Eruca sativa) leaves or seeds on growth performance, feed utilization, biochemical and physiological responses of oreochromis niloticus, fingerlings

Abstract

Medicinal herbs have curative powers and are used in making medicines because of their healing properties. The present study aimed to evaluate the effect of dietary graded levels (0, 1, 2 and 3% kgG 1 diet) of both Dried Rocket (Eruca sativa) Leaves (DRL) or Seeds (DRS) on the growth performance, feed utilization, chemical composition of body and physiological parameters of all male monosex Nile tilapia, Oreochromis niloticus fingerlings for 8 weeks in indoor feeding experiment. A total of 168 fish with average initial body weight 17.14±0.35 g were randomly distributed into eight treatments referred No. T 1, T 2, T 3 and T 4 for DRL and T 5 T 6, T 7 and T 8 treatments for DRS. Results revealed that T 4 and T 7 were the best treatments which were responsible for the significantly (p≤0.05) increased growth performance, feed utilization, chemical composition of the whole fish body, blood hematological and biochemical parameters among all treatments. Dietary DRS gave the best results compared with DRL. Thus, it is recommended that the inclusion of 3% DRL (T 4) or 2% DRS (T 7) as feed additives of all male monosex O. niloticus are more useful for improving their growth performance, feed utilization, chemical composition of the whole fish body and physiological responses.