The livestock and aqua feed industries continue to grow year-on-year, which has resulted in higher demand for protein ingredients, especially the fishmeal. Although, the supply of fishmeal reaches 6.0 to 6.5 million metric tons each year (thefishsite.com), the supply of fishmeal is stagnant and isn’t expected to grow due to environmental pollution and over-catching capability that results in a limited fishmeal supply. In addition, the trends of requiring sustainable growth and environment protection to many industries, including livestock and aqua feeds that requires urgent innovation in developing the novel protein products (microbial biomass/single cell proteins, insect meals, high-quality vegetable protein concentrates, etc.) to address for fishmeal replacement in diets of aquaculture and livestock species.
Fish meal has been a major protein in diets of the shrimp and marine fish species as it has high energy and protein levels, excellent essential amino acid (EAAs) profile and digestibility, good sources of cholesterol and fatty acids as well as minerals (Ca/P), absence of anti-nutritional factors (ANFs), and for its availability in quantity, also. Besides, shrimp and marine fish species require attractants and palatability in such high-quality and clean fishmeal that makes several challenges for the novel and innovated protein products to be successful in completely fishmeal replacement in shrimp and marine fish species (F3 – Fish Free Feed).
Therefore, in this presentation, some key factors on nutritional aspects required for fishmeal alternatives will be discussed and the available novel protein ingredients will be evaluated for fishmeal replacement as well as the approaches how to replace fishmeal in diets of the shrimp and marine fish species will also be suggested in more practical applications.