Amino Acid Composition of Thirty Food Fishes of the Ganga Riverine Environment for Addressing Amino Acid Requirement through Fish Supplementation

Abstract

Amino acids are significant biomolecules that govern the major metabolic processes and act as precursors for macromolecules such as proteins that are crucial to life. Fish is an integral component of human nutrition and a dietary source of high-quality animal proteins and amino acids. In this context, the crude protein and amino acid compositions of food fish from different landing stations of the Ganga river have been determined. The Kjeldahl method was utilized to determine the crude protein content and the amino acids were analyzed using high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC); data on 30 food fish were assessed. The study showed that among the fish studied, Eleotris fusca, Macrobrachium malcomsonii, and Mystus cavasius were rich in most of the amino acids important for human nutrition, such as glycine, glutamic acid, cysteine, threonine, phenylalanine, methionine, lysine, leucine, isoleucine, histidine, and valine. Further, it was observed that the daily consumption of these fish (approximately 50 g) can fulfil the daily requirement of these individual amino acids for an adult human with a body weight of 60 kg. Therefore, the amino acid composition analyzed in the present study could be utilized for recommendation by clinicians according to the requirement for specific amino acids, and fish can be prescribed as a natural supplement against the amino acid requirement.

Keywords: Ganga river; HPLC; amino acids; fish; fish supplementation; protein.

Figure 1

Sampling sites of the fish sample collection. The black boxes in the figure represent the sampling sites on the river Ganga.

Figure 2

Fish required for human (g/day) consumption for fulfilling the amino acid requirement of an adult human weighing 60 kg, as per Joint FAO/WHO/UNU, 2007 [12].

Figure 3

The RDA for adult men (60 kg weight) is plotted along the Y-axis, and the potential contribution of the fish studied (top five) (DV%) is presented along the X-axis. DV% was calculated using the determined amino acid concentration and the RDA following the Joint FAO/WHO/UNU guidelines (2007) [12]. For calculating the DV%, each serving was considered as 50 g.