Aqua Culture Biotechnology Group

Biotechnology provides powerful tools for sustainable of aquaculture, fisheries and also in food industry. Demand for fish is soaring worldwide. So aquaculture could help to meet increasing demands and biotechnology can make great contribution to improve the yields. Our present research work was done on the molecular characterization of freshwater carnivorous fish Sperata sarwari in three different rivers (Chenab, Sutlej and Ravi) of Punjab by using RAPD PCR techniques.  We deals with the following areas:

  1. Toxicology and Nano toxicology
  2. Molecular biology and genetics; Species identification, Molecular characterization and genetic diversity of aquatic organism
  3. Aquaculture Microbiology; Use of probiotic, identification of gut microbes and their role in digestion and growth

Techniques used in aquaculture biotechnology

  1. Proximate analysis of fish meet; Kjeldahl method, Soxhlet method and amino acid analysis
  2. Atomic absorption spectrophotometer (AAS) for analysis of heavy metal, organic pollutants, pesticides and NPs (nanoparticles)
  3. Spectrophotometry
  4. Histopathology
  5. Microtome
  6. DNA/ RNA isolation
  7. Polymerase chain reaction
  8. Isolation and characterization gut microbes through 16s RNA sequencing

In future we develop the PCR RAPD techniques for the detection DNA damage caused by pollutants (heavy metals, NPs and pesticides), enhance the growth of fish by using probiotic and prebiotics and also develop the aquaponic system at Akhuwat FIRST.