Fish Health

The Fish Health program at the Thad Cochran National Warmwater Aquaculture Center (NWAC) is a collaborative effort between the Mississippi Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station (MAFES) and MSU’s College of Veterinary Medicine (CVM) Aquatic Research and Diagnostic Laboratory (ARDL). The program combines clinical and applied fish-health research, along with diagnostic support services to develop management solutions to fish health related issues. The ARDL is central to the fish-health program and offers a comprehensive disease diagnostic service to U.S. catfish producers. Diagnostic data is entered into a retrievable database allowing for the surveillance and mapping of disease trends.

Clinical- and molecular-based research has been instrumental in obtaining FDA drug approval for treatment of catfish, identifying and characterizing emergent diseases, developing risk assessments for bacterial and parasitic diseases, and development of rapid molecular-based diagnostic assays for pathogen detection in environmental and tissue samples. These assays have been developed for all important catfish pathogens and integrated into a format for the detection of multiple pathogens from a single sample reaction. Assays are also used to evaluate environmental pathogen loading rates in response to treatments and changes in management.

Diagnostic and clinical research supports applied fish-health research in developing management and novel treatment strategies effective in mitigating disease related losses. Collaborative efforts between MAFES and CVM have led to control strategies for trematode infestations, idiopathic anemia, and bacterial infections through combined use of vaccines, restricted feeding schedules, and medicated feeds.

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