Abstract

We examined the seasonal variation of the proximate, amino acid, fatty acid composition and glycogen contents of triploid Pacific oyster cultured in western coastal waters of Korea in 2015. The specimens were collected in February, May, August and November from off-bottom farming site. The lipid content was the highest in winter season (February, $2.10{\pm}0.06%$), the protein content was the highest in autumn season (November, $9.09{\pm}0.04%$) while the moisture and ash content was the highest in summer season (August, $86.00{\pm}0.12%$ and $2.67{\pm}0.03%$, respectively). The total amino acid contents was the highest in winter season (1,011.5 mg / 100 g), decreased gradually and was the lowest in summer season (486.7 mg / 100 g). The total amino acid composition was dominated by taurine, aspartic acid, glutamic acid, glycine and alanine. In the fatty acid composition, the two fatty acids, eicosapentaenoic acid and docosahexaenoic acid, which comprised that as much as 50% of the total fatty acid contents, were dominated during all season. The glycogen content was the highest in summer season ($1.26{\pm}0.03g$ / 100 g) although it was stable during the other season with the range of $0.69{\pm}0.04-0.86{\pm}0.01g$ / 100 g. Taken together, these results suggest that triploid pacific oysters have high commercial value not only in winter season but in summer season because they do not spawn and have high contents of glycogen comparing with those of diploid oyster in this period.