Status and Countermeasures of Development of Siniperca chuatsi Breeding Industry in Guangdong Province

As a high-quality fish with high protein and unsaturated fatty acids, Siniperca chuatsi is an important aquaculture species in Guangdong, with a stable aquaculture production that ranks first in the whole country, and the production in 2022 was 148 700 t, accounting for 37.05% of the total output of S. chuatsi in the country. With the increasing demand for high-quality aquatic products in domestic market, S. chuatsi is increasingly favored by domestic consumers. China's S. chuatsi production has grew steadily from 2018 to 2022, with Guangdong, Hubei and Anhui ranking the top three in terms of S. chuatsi production, and the degree of industry aggregation will further increase. With the overall production of S. chuatsi in Guangdong rising on a steady trend, the domestic market share of S. chuatsi has been gradually occupied by Guangdong. Compared with China's major freshwater aquaculture fish, the market wholesale price of S. chuatsi has a greater advantage. As a key breeding area of S. chuatsi industry in China, and the largest production area of S. chuatsi seedlings in the country, the major breeding species of S. chuatsi in Guangdong is S. chuatsi (Basilewsky), and the main production areas of the breeding are located in Foshan, Zhaoqing, Guangzhou, Qingyuan, and Jiangmen, etc. The major breeding modes are pond breeding, cage breeding, water tank breeding and factory feed breeding, with the mainly breeding way of feeding on live bait fish. There is gradual expansion of S. chuatsi aquaculture and market scale in Guangdong Province with future development trend of large-scale breeding. Taking the market price of S. chuatsi in 2022 as a reference, a cost-benefit analysis was conducted for the S. chuatsi cultured with live bait and feed.The results showed that the average total cost of feed S. chuatsi was much lower than that of live bait S. chuatsi, with a large profit margin. In regard to the deficiencies of seedling, breeding environment and feed-based mode of S. chuatsi breeding industry in Guangdong, countermeasures such as strengthening the S. chuatsi seed system, promoting the development of feed S. chuatsi stably, further building a quality and safety system for S. chuatsi, and actively pushing the transformation of S. chuatsi breeding mode were proposed to provide references for the development of S. chuatsi industry in Guangdong.