Comparative growth and morphometric assessment between cultures of wild and hatchery-produced mud crabs.

This paper reports the comparative growth, nutritional performance, and morphometric variation between wild and hatchery-reared juvenile mud crabs ( in earthen ponds. The crabs were fed daily with boiled tilapia paste at a feeding rate of 5-8% body weight for the first two weeks, followed by feeding with chopped eviscerated tilapia until termination of the experiment. Selected phenotypic trains, including carapace width (CW), carapace length (CL) and abdominal width (AW), were measured weekly.