Nutritional Composition of Semolina Jaggery Diet and its Effect on Reproductive Fitness of Harwich strain Drosophila melanogaster

Abstract

Nutrition plays a pivotal role in the development of an organism. Drosophila melanogaster is an important model for nutritional research. The nutritional composition of semolina-jaggery diet on fecundity and filial generation output of Harwich strain D. melanogaster was studied using standard methods. Semolina- jaggery diet, which are product of wheat endosperm and cane sugar respectively are rich in carbohydrate, protein, and dietary sugars. Semolina-jaggery diet was prepared in 5%, 10% and 15% with corn flour diet as the control group. 15% semolina-jaggery had the highest percentage carbohydrate (15.12±0.30) while highest protein content was recorded in control diet (3.46±0.08). Fecundity of D. melanogaster reared on semolina-jaggery diet varied across days with 5% SJ having the highest mean number of eggs. The 10% SJ recorded the highest mean number of offspring across five generations but was lower to the offspring output of control group in all the five generations. The nutritional composition in the varying percentages of semolina-jaggery diet had significant effect on the egg laying and offspring output of Harwich strain Drosophila melanogaster.