Morphological variation analysis of three populations of red tilapia

Abstract:

The morphometric differences among the three populations of red tilapia from Chinese Taiwan, Israel and Malaysia were studied with one-way ANOVA, cluster analysis and principal component analysis. Regression analysis was used to compare the impacts of morphological traits on body weight among three populations of red tilapia and establish the multiple regression equations. Analysis of meristic characters indicated that there were no significant differences among these strains. In the morphological traits which had higher value of correlative coefficient to fillet yield, there were significant differences between Chinese Taiwan strain and Israel strain, Malaysia strain. Cluster and principal component analysis showed that morphological characters were rather similar between Israel strain and Malaysia strain, from which Chinese Taiwan strain was different. Three principal components were constructed of which the contributory ratio, from high to low, were 34.804%, 16.667% and 12.974%,summing up to 64.446%. The results of regression analysis revealed that body length, body width and caudal peduncle depth were the key impact factors to body weight of the strains from Chinese Taiwan and Israel, and the traits affecting the body weight of Malaysia strain most converted to body length, body depth and body width. The results of multi-variant indicate that there are some morphological differences among the three populations of red tilapia and the indicators of morphological traits were body depth, head length, caudal peduncle depth, snout length and total length.