Regenerating capacity of Asian Cat fish, Clarias batrachus (Linnaeus, 1758)

In spite of being commercially important and having high market demand, efforts put in for breeding and propagation of the Asian cat fish, Clarias batrachus has not gained the desired momentum as the process demands ablation of the male brood fish for collection of testes. The deep wound so created leads to mortality of the fish resulting in negative impact on broodstock population and farmers' income. Attempts made for post-surgical revival of the fish (weight 110.0-190.0 g/fish) by performing the incision with minimum injury revealed that the fish had amazing capacity of wound healing by regeneration of lost tissue with 83.9-92.6 % (average 87.8%) post-surgical recovery. The incision (4.0-4.5 cm in length) had completely healed within 30-35 days without any medication or stitching. There was post-surgical regeneration of the testicular tissue after 190±10 days in 90% of the randomly sampled fish. Fully developed testes were observed in 86.9% of the samples after 280-310 days of post-surgery rearing. These findings pave the way to address the inherent problem of mortality of male broods vis a vis to explore possible biomedical application of the regenerating capacity of the fish.