Development of biomarkers for discrimination of farmed and wild silver carp by fatty acid profiling

Silver carp (Hypophthalmichthys molitrix) has been identified as one of the four famous Chinese carps. The Yangtze River is the main home to silver carp. However, during the "ten-year fishing ban", illegal fishing frequently occurred, law enforcement agencies failing to discriminate between farmed and wild fish from the Yangtze River. Therefore, there is a strong need to develop a simple and effective method to discriminate between farmed and wild silver carp from the Yangtze River. In this study, 76 fatty acids were analyzed in 266 silver carp samples. The top 8 fatty acids that exhibited the best performance were identified as candidate biomarkers. The different origins of wild silver carp were also identified. Based on receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis, myristic acid proportion of total fatty acids was considered as a biomarker which has high sensitivity and specificity in discrimination of farmed and wild silver carp.