Estimation of fish proximate composition starting from water content

The knowledge of proximate composition of fishery species is fundamentally important for: the application of different technological processes, the characteristics post-mortem of species, as an aspect of quality of raw material and giving an idea of sexual stage. This work reports a series of mathematical equations with water content as the independent variable, based on a statistical study of proximate composition of 41 teleost fish families. These families include 187 species which were included into one of two categories: lean or fat. For lean families, the equation relating the %protein content and %water content could be used to estimate the %protein having the analytical determination of %water. For fat families, the second-order regression equation obtained could be useful in the estimation of %lipid content based on the analytical determination of %water content.