Larviculture techniques of Chinese mitten crab Eriocheir sinensis

Eriocheir sinensis is considered a luxury aquatic food for Chinese people due to its delicate flavor, and it therefore reaches a high market value. Its hatchery production and farming are being performed almost exclusively in China. Although breakthroughs in seed production and larval rearing techniques of E. sinensis have been achieved in the early 1980s, a fast expansion of hatchery production only took off in the 1990s, with the dramatic decline in natural recruitment. Many techniques have only been published as brief descriptions of local farmers' experience and most of these articles were written in Chinese. This paper provides general information on the hatchery techniques in aspects of broodstock maturation, spawning and larval rearing and points out the main bottlenecks of current mitten crab hatchery operations.