A total of 187 samples of Channa punctatus (Bloch, 1793) from River Gomti of Lucknow region, Uttar Pradesh were studied during 2011. The sex ratio of 1: 0.84 was not significantly different from 1:1. Monthly variation in the gonadosomatic index (GSI) and maximum number of stage IV gonads encountered in the months of May to August indicated that the spawning season extends for about 4 months and spawning was high during the monsoon season. Absolute fecundity varied from 11000 to 28000, with an average value of 14920. Fecundity was found to be highly correlated to the total length (r = 0.9201), body weight (r = 0.9133) and weight of ovary (r = 0.8536) with all correlation coefficients being highly significant (p<0.0001). Total length (TL) of fish and weight of the ovary also highly correlated (r = 0.9551, p<0.0001). This study provides primary information on reproductive parameters of C. punctatus from River Gomti which can be utilised for management of the resource.

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Morphometric variation study was carried out using truss analysis in freshwater murrel, Channa punctatus (Bloch, 1793), to explore different phenotypic stocks of C. punctatus. Significant variation in the morphometric analysis was observed using the truss network and multivariate analysis of the three subpopulations of freshwater murrel, C. punctatus, from the two different regions of India. Principal component analysis accounted for a total variation of 91.95% by the first three principal components. PC 1 represented the variation due to size and PC 2 and PC 3 represented variations due to shape. The 95% confidence ellipses depicted the clear isolation between the samples in scatter graph of PC 1 on PC 2. The combined groups plot (DF 1 on DF 2) based on discriminant function analysis (DFA) also validated the existence of three different subpopulations. In group classification using DFA, 100 percent of all the samples were correctly classified into their original subpopulation. These results support the existence of multiracial composition of C. punctatus across the different geographical isolated sites and, thus, these findings indicate the presence of three different phenotypic stocks of C. punctatus.

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