Evaluation of fungal single cell protein as aqua feed on carcass analysis and growth performance of Cirrhinus reba fingerlings

Abstract

Aquaculture is now becoming a fast-growing industry in order to meet the increasing demand (Alriksson et al., 2014) for formulating and processing suitable and sustainable aqua feeds. Fish meal is extensively used in aquaculture. Because of the scarce availability of high quality fish meal, increase in fish meal price, and a huge gap in its demand, and supply, there is a need to find an alternative, locally available protein source to replace fish meal partially or completely to bring down the cost of the fish feed (Karimi et al., 2018). Additionally, the use of fish meal in feed formulations of minor carp is restricted for sustainable health benefits of these farmed fish (AQUAMAX Project 2006Naylor et al., 2000), and thus, the feed formulations are based on vegetable protein sources (Paul et al., 2017). Rice bran oil cake is the most widely used aqua feed in India, which is not a high quality fish feed based on nutrition. Thus, the supply of high quality fish feed becomes one of the major barriers in aqua culture industry which tends to increase the production price of aqua feed. Searching for an inexpensive alternative protein source to fish meals with efficient growth performance and nutrient utilization properties has gained much attention in recent years. An interesting alternative is SCP (Tlusty et al., 2017) that consists of mainly yeast, algae, bacteria or fungi. SCPs are rich in essential nutrients like desirable protein content with a good blend of amino acids, minerals, vitamins and fatty acids. Thus with excellent nutritive value and capacity to be mass produced SCP has proved to be very promising in the evolution of aqua diets.