Food and nutritional security will be the key challenge to feed almost 9 billion mouths during 2050 with the limitations of land and water resources. Hence, intensive aquaculture production is the only available option, which must be environment friendly and sustainable as well. Balancing both the side needs precision technological intervention. Hence, aggressive feed based aquaculture with thorough understanding of different facets of aquaculture nutrition may be the right strategy for the future. Intensification is always associated with much adverse impact related to health and immunity of fish. In such situation aquafeed formulators must pay special attention not only to nutritional specifications but also to reduce the potential risk of disease along with augmenting growth performances and immunity of fish.
Though fish nutrition research has made a significant progress, but still some areas needs prior attention. Larval and broodstock nutrition of many species has not even touched due to various reasons like lack of infrastructural facility of preparing right type of feed and unavailability of sufficient data for the nutritional value of live food. Similarly, commercial broodstock feed is yet to get momentum. Only grow-out feed has made a visible change in the market, which share less than 5% of the total feed used for the grow-out practices. The major chunk remains with the farmer as farm-made feed. However, cost implication is same both for the commercial and farm-made feed as cost of the raw materials is increasing. Demand for the raw materials with the expanding aquafeed industry is not matching with the present availability of the feed ingredients. Hence, using the unconventional feed ingredients will be the only option without any choice in future. Use of different strategies like irradiation through electron beam, selective extraction of protein from non-edible seed & leaf, use of additives & nutraceuticals for enhancing nutrient bio-availability from these unexplored resources will facilitate to reduce the production cost along with ensured availability of ingredients for a long period while safeguarding the environment. One expected concern will be the impact of anti-nutrients presents in these ingredients may have a significant impact on metabolism and immunity of fish, which needs thorough study with special reference to the feed quality and food safety. Fish physiology is one more critical area which can not be overlooked. But most of the basic physiological studies are conducted in the general university and not in the state Agricultural Universities. Lack of faculty in Fish Physiology in different colleges is the major bottleneck for which integrating basic and applied research in fish nutrition research is missing. Nutrigenomic research facilitate more insight picture about nutrient response to expression of some specific gene linked to different traits. Though fish nutrition research has different facets, but it needs right type of integration for increasing the overall production efficiency of feed based culture system. Holistic approach rather than individual approach in fish nutrition research needs fast-tracking to address the issue of intensification and sustainability for next generation aquaculture.