Pressures to reduce fishmeal consumption for sustainability reasons, combined with economic reasons, require intensive research efforts to find candidates for fish meal replacement. However, formulating low fish meal aquaculture feeds requires the use of combinations of several ingredients since most feedstuffs have been shown to have significant nutrient and functional limitations and cannot be used individually at very high levels in the diets of most aquaculture species. Fishmeal has always been the main source and the preferred choice of nutritionists for quality protein, above all in the formulation and especially in feeds for the youngest ages. Though, with the market volatility of fishmeal, the aquaculture feed industry is looking for cheaper sources of protein to substitute the fishmeal and this has become a priority. Additional renewable and sustainable protein alternatives are needed.
The use of a novel fermented soybean meal ME-PRO ® along with low inclusion levels of marine proteins appeared to be a superior feed combination and analog to fishmeal and other marine proteins. The evaluation of several inclusion rates of ME-PRO ® in broodstock , larvae and grow-out feeds have been evaluated in Pacific whiteleg shrimp, Litopenaeus vannamei . Data will be presented including examples of shrimp performance in recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS) with high stocking densities and final biomass of 4-5 Kg-shrimp/m3.