The catfish industry, after being hit in recent years with a failing market and competition from foreign impostors, is rallying behind a brawny young stud with a hearty appetite.
It's known simply as "103." That's short for National Warmwater Aquaculture Center 103, a new strain of catfish named after the Stoneville laboratory where it was created two years ago. A test crop was released to 35 farmers, who were chosen by lottery.
Those farmers began harvesting the first fingerlings, the stage of growth between 2-9 inches, from the test crop in February, and so far the product looks good.
"It's just a superior fish," said Austin Jones of Moorhead. "I've been working in the catfish industry since 1969. I started my own farm in 1982. And these are just better.
"It's not just a marginal difference. It's a dramatic difference."
The 103s grow consistently to be about 20 percent larger than ordinary pond-raised strains. That's because they eat more, but only about 13 percent, for an overall pound-for-pound savings in production.
Of the farmers who were given license to the fish, Jones got the most. He raised 120,000 pounds - 12 ponds worth - of broodfish, for breeding, for the initial crop.
All that didn't come for nothing. He paid $3 per pound for the broodfish - the normal price for fingerlings is around 60 cents - but he expects to reap much more in return.
Scientists arrived at the 103 through selective breeding. They mated fish with the most favorable traits for size, feeding habits and reproduction.
"It's very similar to going out to pasture and selecting a bull you want in your herd," said Hugh Warren, executive director of Catfish Farmers of America.
Bulls, though, like most livestock, aren't tagged with an identification number. But the catfish industry is treating this fish as a plant, Warren said.
"What we're doing is modeling our program after a plant crop, like lines of corn and cotton and soybeans that you can license to ensure you can replicate the traits into a cash crop."
Other advantages to 103 are a high birth rate - "They lay eggs well," says Jones - and a low premature death rate. As the size of farm-raised catfish has grown over the years with advances in production, so have the demands of catfish processing plants.
The state-of-the-art filleting machines that companies are installing in their plants just about require the farmer to produce big fish all the time, according to Jones. The answer on the farm was to let the fish loaf in the pond longer, making them more vulnerable to hungry birds, disease and oxygen depletion, he said.
It takes 103s three months less to reach optimum size.
The catfish industry is hoping 103 is the answer to its economic woes. Catfish prices were up to 75 cents a pound in 2000. Last year, the market price bottomed out at about 50 cents. It's hanging around 57 cents now.
"I know this fish can help farmers on profitability," said Jones. "We can grow them faster and grow them larger faster."
One detriment to the market has been outside competition from another whiskered fish that industry experts say isn't the same breed as American channel catfish. Known commonly as basa or tra, the Vietnamese import is raised in unregulated conditions and has brought prices anywhere from 40 to about 65 percent below price of American-raised varieties.
These fish ended up on catfish buffet lines and in grocery stores across the United States, deflating the market as Americans unsuspectingly ate them.
Last year, Congress passed a labeling law that requires all catfish to be identified as "U.S. farm-raised."
Then, in January, the U.S. Department of Commerce raised tariffs on Vietnamese fish after determining that Vietnam has been dumping its fish into the American market at unfair prices.
But the market is still flooded with the foreign product, according to Warren, who says that before the regulatory laws were enacted, traders pumped in Vietnamese fish in larger quantities.
Once 103 becomes the common fish among American growers, imitating the home crop should be a lot more difficult, Jones said.
The proof lies in the whiskers. With a clip of one of them, scientists will be able to identify a 103 fish by its DNA.
Jones is chairman of a newly formed company that is buying the licensing rights for 103 from Mississippi State University. The group will be responsible for regulating who gets the breed and where it goes.
"We're trying to keep the purity and integrity of the fish," he said.
Warren said any American farmers can buy a license to raise 103, but foreign growers can't have it. The industry wants to make sure it eliminates the possibility of another basa entering the market, he explained. Next time, it might be the real thing.
"We don't want these fish to go to a foreign country and become propagated and then re-enter our market as a competitor," Warren said.
