China's non-toxic puffer fish breeding technology has been successful

"The wormwood is full of land buds and shoots are short, it is when the puffer fish want to go." In early spring, it is the season of eating delicious puffer fish. For Yang Qingfa, who has studied puffer fish farming for more than a decade, it is now a busy season for his business. He is responsible for the breeding base in Qingpu District has 230 acres of fish ponds, each year to farmers in Shanghai, Jiangsu and other places to provide puffer fish fry 230 million.

Yang Ching made a good news last weekend: He invented the "non-toxic farming techniques of the family of Obsidian oriental crickets" and won the second prize of the Shanghai Invention Innovation Award granted in the second Shanghai Invention Innovation Contest. Takifugu obscurus is the main species of puffer fish and its wild population is highly toxic. This artificial breeding technique can make the Takifuguchi without any toxins. "With technical protection and effective supervision by government departments, 'shrimp eating puffer fish' can become history," said Yang Qingfa.

Toxins "warehouse" non-toxic can be stored in the early 40s Yang Qingfa, dealing with puffer fish for more than 10 years. After graduating from master's degree, he came to the Shanghai Fisheries Research Institute to conduct research in fish biology and special aquaculture. Since then, he has become interested in the artificial breeding of puffer fish. According to reports, in the 1990s, there was only one research project on Shanghai-based puffer fish, which was undertaken by the Shanghai Fisheries Research Institute. After years of research and development, Yangqing Hair has mastered a relatively mature set of techniques for rearing oriental oysters. In 2003, he founded a fishery technology company and began to explore the road to resource and industrial utilization of puffer fish.

It is known that puffer fish taste delicious, but it is highly toxic. Tiny puffer fish toxins can cause nerve paralysis, vomiting, and chills in the extremities, causing heartbeat and respiratory arrest. The chef who cooks puffer fish must be professionally trained to completely remove toxin-containing ovaries, livers, kidneys, eyes, and tendons during cooking. Even so, the tragedy of eating puffer fish died every year in the country.

Yang Qingfa said that as the main species of puffer fish, in fact, the body of Takifugu obscurus does not secrete or metabolize toxins, and its toxins come from the food chain and marine bacteria. “This kind of puffer fish is like a storehouse for storing toxins. They just accumulate exogenous toxins in the body.” Professor Wu Hanlin, professor of Shanghai Ocean University’s toxic fish expert, supported this view. He studied the wild tarnish oriental trevally. It is believed that their muscles, blood and testes are non-toxic.

Therefore, Yang Qingfa proposed the technical route of breeding “non-toxic puffer fish”: cut off the connection between puffer fish and exogenous toxins in the breeding process, and let the “reservoir” of toxins stay in a “vacant” state through standardized breeding and purification treatments. , so that the puffer fish into the market without any toxins, from the source to eliminate the "fighting to eat puffer fish" risk.

Making non-toxic puffer fish more delicious Along this line, Yang Qingfa led the team for more than ten years of industrial aquaculture exploration.

First of all, they screened out non-toxic individuals from the population of Takifugu obscurus. According to reports, Takifugu obscurus is a unique species of pufferfish in China, and it is known as saury, squid, and squid. It is called the "Four Freshness of the Yangtze River." (The silver sword is the swordfish, the black dragon is the yangtze of the Yangtze River, and the dragonfly is the squid.  is puffer fish). As a migratory fish, the wild tarnish oriental tawny is sexually mature in the spring, and the East China Sea enters the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River or the Poyang Lake water system. The juveniles are fattened in fresh water, and they swim to the sea in autumn and winter. The toxins in the Takifugu were accumulated in the sea. In the cultured environment, the dark-faced oriental eel is far from the marine toxin-producing bacteria and marine poisonous food organisms, and its food safety has been greatly improved. In these artificially-breeded individuals, the researchers found some pufferfish that contained no toxins in the body and grouped them together to form a non-toxic puffer fish population. On this basis, they cultivated a family of non-toxic puffer fishes and created a "non-toxic seedling resource pool" for the artificial breeding of the dark-skinned oriental crucian carp.

The non-toxic fish fry is not enough. The team used a set of standardized modes to block the connection between the puffer fish and the external poisonous sources in the breeding process: the toxins in the bait should be strictly removed, and the artificial salt water simulating seawater should be timely sterilized... ... With these standardized operations, toxins can be prevented from accumulating in the puffer fish through the co-production of toxic bacteria and the food chain. The researchers also developed purification treatment technology to remove the smell of puffer fish and improve the quality of commercial fish.

Today, Yang Qingfa has applied for eight invention patents in the field of puffer fish breeding. After adopting these technologies with independent intellectual property rights, the breeding base he is responsible for can steadily cultivate non-toxic puffer fish fry for supply to farmers in Shanghai, Jiangsu and other places, with an annual output of 20 to 30 million. In terms of nursery time, the new technology will allow the puffer fish to “divide” half a year ahead of schedule. The natural breeding time of the pufferfish is 5 to 6 months, and the artificially cultivated oriental tawny oyster will breed the next generation in December. Through the germplasm rejuvenation technology, the breeding specifications of the puffer fish species reached 150-200 grams in the current year, which is more than 20% higher than the 125 grams of the first generation seedlings.

Will the puffer fish be as tasty as the original after losing its toxicity? “The taste of puffer fish is not necessarily related to toxins.” Yang Qingfa replied that whether puffer fish is delicious or not is closely related to the quality of feed and the culture environment. At present, the Qingpu Breeding Base is doing further research on this, so that the “Qingpu Estate” has become more and more beautiful as its output continues to rise.