CATDOLL : CATDOLL: What is the history of eel farming?

As a "small aquatic product" breeding species, the eel was not taken seriously by people in the past, and the natural resources were also very limited. For a long time, people only did simple temporary breeding when they caught a large number of them. There is no record of when it started. In the era of vigorously developing rice planting, it was poisoned in large quantities as a harmful organism in rice fields. Research on the eel began after the founding of New China. Liu Jiankang (1951) first discovered the hermaphroditism of the eel, and further discovered that the eel is a protogynous hermaphrodite, that is, the eel is female from the embryo to the sexual maturity stage. After mature spawning, the oocyte disappears, the ovary degenerates, and the spermatogonia begins to develop, and finally transforms to the male side until it matures again with male characteristics.

In the late 1980s, Tao Yaxiong, Zhou Dinggang, Dong Yuankai, Han Mingzhu, Wang Xingli, Zou Jixing and others studied the reproduction mechanism and artificial propagation of the eel. You Wenjian and Wu Jiankai of the Yangtze River Fisheries Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Fishery Sciences conducted necessary research on pond culture and artificial culture of eels in cement ponds in the late 1980s. After that, various breeding methods appeared one after another, such as rice field culture (Fan Xiangguo, 1996; Ling Zhiyong, 1994), cage culture (Peng Xiuzhen, 1995), earth pond culture and cement pond culture (Peng Xiuzhen, 1995; Huang Lin, 1993; Li Lian, 1990). The development of eel farming is in line with the needs of the market.

After the reform and opening up, my country's aquaculture has achieved unprecedented development, and the scale and output of conventional aquatic species have been rapidly improved. In particular, after the State Council proposed to solve the problem of people's "vegetable basket project" in the 1990s, the problem of people's difficulty in eating fish has been gradually solved. People have shifted from the pursuit of quantity to the pursuit of quality. Some species called "small aquatic products" at that time (such as eel, mandarin fish, turtle, black fish, etc.) were highly praised because of their delicious taste. The market prices of these species have also soared, and people's enthusiasm for the cultivation of these species has continued to increase.

Many aquatic research institutes and some aquaculture farms have begun to study the artificial breeding of eels, and have explored the artificial propagation, seed cultivation and adult fish breeding of eels, providing a large amount of technical information for the future large-scale breeding of eels. The vigorous development of eel breeding began in the late 1990s after the cage breeding technology matured, and large-scale breeding began to take shape. The large-scale development of eel breeding has provided a large number of fresh eels for the Chinese market, but due to the huge demand in the domestic market and the gradual increase in demand in the international market, the contradiction between the supply and demand of eels is also increasing.

For a long time, the supply of artificial breeding seedlings of yellow eel has been completely dependent on wild seedlings. The limited supply of wild seedlings has restricted the development of yellow eel breeding. Now, scientists are conducting research on large-scale artificial breeding technology of yellow eel, and have made major technical breakthroughs, which is expected to be promoted in the next few years.