ORIGINAL ARTICLE Resistance to vibriosis, production performance and tolerance to stress of the selected giant freshwater prawn (Macrobrachium rosenbergii) Ikhsan Khasani 1,2 | Angela Mariana Lusiastuti 3 | Muhammad Zairin 1 | Alimuddin Alimuddin 1 1 Department of Aquaculture, Faculty of Fisheries and Marine Science, Bogor Agricultural University, Bogor, Indonesia 2 Research Institute for Fish Breeding, West Java, Indonesia 3 Institute of Research and Development for Freshwater Aquaculture, Bogor, Indonesia Correspondence Alimuddin Alimuddin, Department of Aquaculture, Faculty of Fisheries and Marine Science, Bogor Agricultural University, Bogor, Indonesia. Email: alimuddin@ipb.ac.id Abstract The purpose of this study was to evaluate the resistance to vibriosis, growth, sur- vival and tolerance to stress of the selected prawn, second generation, compared to a non-selected control. The first generation of selected giant freshwater prawn, which has 10.4% higher of resistance, was used to attain disease resistant freshwa- ter prawn (Macrobrachium rosenbergii) generation through challenge test-based selec- tion. Resistance test was conducted by infecting the prawn (mean body weight of 10.29 Æ 1.40 g) with pathogenic Vibrio harveyi (5 9 10 5 cfu prawn À1 ). The growth and survival of the prawn were evaluated by rearing the two populations of prawn in both nursery and grow-out phases. Stress tolerance test was done by evaluating the viability of postlarvae exposed to environmental stressors, i.e. temperature, salinity, NH 3 and formaldehide. Post-challenge survival of the selected prawn (55.0 Æ 5.0%) was about 46% higher than that of the control (37.5 Æ 7.5%). The survival of the selected prawn in nursery culture (77.16 Æ 0.841%) was significantly higher (p < .05) than that of the control (51.31 Æ 2.938%), while the survival in grow-out culture was similar (p > .05). The growth of selected prawn (4.99 Æ 0.03% day À1 ) was significantly higher than that of the control (4.81 Æ 0.05% day À1 ). There was no difference between treatments on the tolerance level against the tested environmental stressor. Overall data suggested that the selected prawn showed bet- ter performance in growth and resistance against vibriosis. KEYWORDS growth, Macrobrachium rosenbergii, resistance, tolerance, vibriosis 1 | INTRODUCTION Selection has been an effective method to improve genetic quality of aquaculture species, in traits such as growth and meat quality (Gjedrem & Robinson, 2014; Gjedrem, Robinson & Rye, 2012) and disease resistance traits (Cock, Gitterle, Salazar & Rye, 2009; Fjalestad, Gjedrem & Gjerde, 1993; Gjedrem, 2015). Selection to improve disease resistance has been reported in some aquaculture commodities, including the walking catfish, Clarias macrocephalus (Na-Nakorn, Chantsawang & Tarnchalanukit, 1994); Pacific white shrimp, Litopenaeus vannamei (Huang, Yin, Weng, He & Li, 2012; Huang et al., 2011; Moss, Doyle & Lightner, 2005); Atlantic salmon, DOI: 10.1111/are.13458 Aquaculture Research. 2017;1–9. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/are © 2017 John Wiley & Sons Ltd | 1