Abstract:
A 84-day feeding trial was conducted to evaluate the effects of dietary aflatoxin B
1 (AFB
1) on growth, physiological responses, histological changes, and accumulation in juvenile grass carp (
Ctenopharyngodon idellus). Triplicate groups of grass carp (2.90±0.16) g were fed with six semipurified diets formulated with isonitrogenous (crude protein: 32.96%), isocaloric (gross energy: 14.55 kJ/g) containing 0, 10, 20, 100, 1000 and 5000 μg/kg AFB
1. AFB
1 did not significantly impact behavior, the survival rate, final body weight (FBW), feeding rate (
FR), specific growth rate (
SGR) or feed efficiency (
FE). No significant differences were found in hepatosomatic index (
HSI) and viscera index (
VSI) among all groups. AFB
1 had no significant effect in activities of serum alanine aminotransferase (ALT), aspartate aminotransferase (AST), alkaline phosphatase (ALP), superoxide dismutase (SOD) and glutathione peroxidase (GSH-Px). No significant histological lesions in hepatopancreas and kidney were identified between the control and increasing AFB
1 treatments. No AFB
1 residue was detected in muscles when fish fed with AFB
1 up to 1000 μg/kg, however, tiny dose (1.21±0.18) μg/kg of AFB
1 were detected in muscles in the group with 5000 μg/kg AFB
1, which was below the safety limitation of FDA. The results indicated that juvenile grass carp is a little susceptible species to AFB
1 exposure up to approximately 5000 μg/kg diet (determined level was 4979.2 μg/kg diet), at least for 84 days.