Effects of feeding glandless or glanded cottonseed products and gossypol to Tilapia aurea

Seven isocaloric and isonitrogenous practical diets in which either glanded or glandless cottonseed products were substituted for soybean and/or peanut meals, and three purified diets containing graded levels of gossypol were fed to fingerling Tilapia aurea for a period of 10 weeks. Growth, feed conversion and survival data indicated that glanded and glandless cottonseed products were not as high in nutritive value for tilapia as are soybean and peanut meals. The inferior performance of fish fed cottonseed protein did not appear to be related to dietary gossypol. Carcass fatty acids generally reflected dietary fatty acids. An increase in palmitic and linoleic fatty acids was observed in fish fed fullfat, glandless cottonseed flour.