Fish Diseases and Management

5.3.2 Virus cultivation

As the virus needs the help of a living cell for its multiplication, cultivation of the viruses could be undertaken only by specific methods. Traditionally, the viruses are cultivated by egg inoculation using hen’s eggs. However, this method has a disadvantage that all the viruses are not adaptable to eggs and thus may not be growing in them. Secondly, they could be cultured in animals under bioassay system, where susceptible animals are inoculated with the viruses and the viruses are harvested from the tissues that support their multiplication. However, this raises a lot ethical questions and is not always practicable. The third and successful method is the use of cell culture systems, which ensure controlled and large scale multiplication of the viruses.