Honey Potential: Quality Enhancement of Cryopreserved Spermatozoa of Sutchi Catfish (Pangasianodon hypophthalmus)
Who likes honey? Honey is one of the natural ingredients that has many benefits. Honey has many nutritious ingredients such as minerals and vitamins, which are obtained from flower nectar which is successfully sucked by bees. Interestingly, honey can also be used to increase the quality of sutchi catfish’s spermatozoa.
Sutchi Catfish is one of the important freshwater fish commodities in Indonesia. However, Sutchi Catfish’s seasonal spawning pattern which is once a year (October to April) causes limited supply to fulfill the demand. Therefore cryopreservation is a solution for limited supply in Sutchi Catfish’s breeding. Cryopreservation is a technique that can provide good quality spermatozoa for artificial insemination. Cryopreservation is used in fish biotechnology in order to solve the cost, risk in fish transport, limited broodstock, gamete storage and also spermatozoa banking. Thus, cryopreservation can be used in Sutchi Catfish to provide spermatozoa from male broodstock for breeding activity continuously.
The main factor that affects the success of cryopreservation is an extender. The extender is important for dilution of fish spermatozoa prior to cryopreservation. The most important function of the extender is to keep the spermatozoa in an immotile state until it is used. The diluents are required in cryopreservation to inhibit the energy used by spermatozoa and prolong the life of spermatozoa by reducing their activity. The energy needed by spermatozoa is obtained from simple sugars (monosaccharides) such as fructose and glucose which are found in honey. Honey contains 41% fructose and 35% glucose that can be used as a source of energy of spermatozoa. In addition, honey also contains salt ions for utilizing energy sources by spermatozoa, defending themselves and helping the fertilization of the egg after the cryopreservation process.
The article which was published in Iraqi Journal of Veterinary Science showed that addition honey in cryopreservation process could improve spermatozoa quality of Sutchi Catfish. However, the interesting information reported from this was adding much honey could decrease the quality of Sutchi Catfish’s spermatozoa in cryopreservation process.
Using more honey could give toxic effect on spermatozoa. The toxicity in the form of changes in osmotic pressure in the diluent thus causing damage to plasma membrane spermatozoa cells. The addition of 0.6% honey was the best result in cryopreservation process of Sutchi Catfish.
Reference
https://vetmedmosul.com/article_153854.html
Author:
Muhammad Browijoyo Santanumurti
(Departemen MKI-BP)
Email: m.browijoyo.s@fpk.unair.ac.id
