87 Morphometry and length-weight relationship of Amblypharyngodon mola (Hamilton-Buchanan, 1822) ANJALI BAISHYA, APARNA DUTTA AND SABITRY BORDOLOI Institute of Advanced study in Science and Technology, P. O. Gorchuk,Guwahati - 781 035, Assam, India e-mail: sabitryborodoloi@rediffmail.com ABSTRACT The morphometry and length-weight relationship of the freshwater fish Amblypharyngodon mola (Hamilton-Buchanan, 1822) from the Garjan beel, Kamrup district of Assam was studied. The study reveals that there is no significant (p>0.05) difference between morphometric characters of male and female fishes and the length-weight relationship established for the fish suggested that the fish did not follow the cube law strictly. The equations and the correlation coefficients suggested a significant relation (p<0.01) between the length and weight of the fish. Keywords: Amblypharyngodon mola, Assam, Length-weight relationship, Morphometry Amblypharyngodon mola (Hamilton-Buchanan, 1822) is a data deficient species (CAMP, 1997). This fish forms an important part of capture fishery (4% of the total catch in the Lower Assam, Lal Mohan, 2000) in the beels of Assam having good market value. It has wide distributional range in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Nepal and SriLanka (Nath and Dey, 1990; Talwar and Jhingran, 1991; Jayaram, 1999; Vishwanath, 2002). Length-weight relationship has considerable importance in fishery research especially for the study of fish population dynamics and growth (Mathur and Bhatara, 2007). These studies are mainly directed towards two objectives, first to establish a mathematical relationship between the two variables: length and weight and secondly to know the variations from expected weight for various length groups (Srivastava and Singh, 2003). This relationship is very useful to estimate the relative condition factor to assess the general well-being of the fish and type of growth, i.e.,whether isometric or allometric (Prasad and Ali, 2007). Fecundity of this fish was studied by Piska and Waghray (1986). There is also information regarding food and feeding behaviour of this fish (Moitra and Das, 2002). The present paper analyses morphometric measurements and length-weight relationship of A. mola from Garjan beel (26°13′5″N to 26°18′5″N and 91°30′41″E to 91°35′40″E) of Kamrup district of Assam. The main purpose of the study was to find whether the fish shows homogeneity of characters between male and female and to see whether their growth follow cube law. The fish belongs to the family cyprinidae. The name Cyprinus mola (Hamilton-Buchanan, 1822) was changed Indian J. Fish., 57(1) : 87-91, 2010 to Amblypharyngodon mola by Day (1878). The vernacular name of the fish in Assam is 'moah' or 'moa' (Talwar and Jhingran, 1991). Fish samples were collected from different landing sites of Garjan beel (2005-2006) to record if there is any variation in the size of male and female. Mature male (Fig.1a) and female fishes (Fig. 1b) were collected from different landing sites. A total of 648 specimens were Note Fig: 1a. Mature male of A. mola Fig: 1b. Mature female of A.mola