Reservoir fisheries development is most essential for quantum jump in inland fish production and socioeconomic up gradation of fishermen. However presently, the fish yield from the reservoir fisheries is frustratingly low, as observed by Sinha (2001). The strategy of enlargement of gear mesh size for capture, increases in fishing efforts and stocking support paid rich dividends in this area. The stocking necessitate the breeding population of economically viable species in the reservoirs. The opportunity needs to be used for establishing the native major food fishes that are compatible and hardy and amenable to the lentic environment of the reservoir, otherwise, the trash fishes multiply and occupy the large volume of water in grater abundance dominating the whole ecosystem. On the other side the native fish should find a natural place in the reservoir not only in point of view of adding to the total production and higher income but also as a biodiversity conservation measures. Sperata aor belongs to Bagridae family and is dispersed throughout Indian subcontinent .This cat fish is a popular food due to its good taste and high nutritional value. Recently, it has also made its entry in domestic ornamental fish markets of India and has been reported to have moderate export price (Sandipan Gupta,2015).

The present review study deals with few biological aspects of few fresh water fishes including catfishes based on published literature as worked out by various researchers of India. Many small fresh water fishes and catfishes have become threatened and endangered due to contamination, over exploitation, habitat destruction, water abstraction, siltation, habitat fragmentation, fish diseases and introduction of alien species. For sustainable utilization, proper planning related to conservation and management strategies are of utmost importance. The earlier studies on the various aspects of fish bionomics have been reviewed under the following headings Viz., length-weight relationship, relative condition factor, food and feeding habits, GSI,HIS, sex ratio and fecundity.

Growing human populations and higher demands for water impose increasing impacts and stresses upon freshwater biodiversity. Their combined effects have made these animals more endangered than their terrestrial and marine counterparts. Overuse and contamination of water, overexploitation and overfishing, introduction of alien species, and alteration of natural flow regimes have led to a 'great thinning' and declines in abundance of freshwater animals, a 'great shrinking' in body size with reductions in large species, and a 'great mixing' whereby the spread of introduced species has tended to homogenize previously dissimilar communities in different parts of the world. Climate change and warming temperatures will alter global water availability, and exacerbate the other threat factors. What conservation action is needed to halt or reverse these trends, and preserve freshwater biodiversity in a rapidly changing world? This book offers the tools and approaches that can be deployed to help conserve freshwater biodiversity.

The existing literature on limnology and fisheries of Indian reservoirs has been reviewed by covering more than 100 reservoirs located in various parts of the country. An assessment of environment-mediated production functions of reservoirs has been attempted. Since the ecosystem processes in reservoirs belonging to different geo-climatic regions exhibit wide variations depending on meteorological, morphometric and hydro-edaphic features of the impoundments, an effort has been made to gauge the influence of these abiotic variables on the production dynamics. Authentic information on water areas under different categories of reservoirs has been collected and interpreted in respect of all the Indian States. An attempt has also been made to resolve the anomalies pertaining to classification and nomenclature to the extent possible. Various fisheries management norms followed in the reservoirs of the country including the selection of species for stocking, stocking rate and introduction of exotic species have been reviewed. Indian reservoirs have been stocked with the Indo-Gangetic carps for many decades and the impact of this stocking has been assessed in terms of fish production and the indigenous faunistic diversity.

Containing information on systematic, habitat and distribution of 2118 finfishes and its scientific name and classification based on Nelson, 1994.

This publication is presented in two parts.

A common approach to understanding the functional repertoire of a genome is through functional genomics. With systems biology burgeoning, bioinformatics has grown to a larger extent for plant genomes where several applications in the form of protein-protein interactions (PPI) are used to predict the function of proteins. With plant genes evolutionarily conserved, the science of bioinformatics in agriculture has caught interest with myriad of applications taken from bench side to in silico studies. A multitude of technologies in the form of gene analysis, biochemical pathways and molecular techniques have been exploited to an extent that they consume less time and have been cost-effective to use. As genomes are being sequenced, there is an increased amount of expression data being generated from time to time matching the need to link the expression profiles and phenotypic variation to the underlying genomic variation. This would allow us to identify candidate genes and understand the molecular basis/phenotypic variation of traits. While many bioinformatics methods like expression and whole genome sequence data of organisms in biological databases have been used in plants, we felt a common reference showcasing the reviews for such analysis is wanting. We envisage that this dearth would be facilitated in the form of this Springer book on Agricultural Bioinformatics. We thank all the authors and the publishers Springer, Germany for providing us an opportunity to review the bioinformatics works that the authors have carried in the recent past and hope the readers would find this book attention grabbing.