Auburn Developing Vaccine That Could Be Huge Catch For Catfish Industry

By Robert DeWitt

After more than seven years of research and testing, Cova Arias knows the vaccine she developed and patented to immunize catfish against columnaris disease works in a laboratory. She will use $321,000 in U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) funds to answer two questions.

“Does it work in the field, and is it cost-effective,” said Arias, a professor in Auburn University’s School of Fisheries, Aquaculture and Aquatic Sciences. “The answer to both of those questions has to be yes.”

If the answer is yes, Arias, who was awarded the competitive grant in November through the Aquaculture Research Program administered by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, will move a step closer to giving catfish farmers an effective weapon to combat one of the worst threats to commercially produced catfish.“Last year we lost almost 2.5 million pounds of fish to columnaris disease,” said Bill Hemstreet, a fish health specialist working with Auburn University’s Alabama Fish Farming Center in Greensboro. “It varies from year to year.”

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