Exploring the Roles of Dietary Herbal Essential Oils in Aquaculture: A Review

Abstract

The aquaculture sector is one of the main activities contributing to food security for humanity around the globe. However, aquatic animals are susceptible to several farming stressors involved in deteriorated growth performance, reduced productivity, and eventually high mortality rates. In some countries still, antibiotics and chemotherapies are comprehensively applied to control biotic stressors. Aside from the apparent benefits, the continuous usage of antibiotics develops bacterial resistance, deteriorates bacterial populations, and accumulates these compounds in the aquatic environment. Alternatively, environmentally friendly additives were used to avoid the direct and indirect impacts on the aquatic ecosystem and human health. In aquaculture, medicinal herbs and extracts are extensively used and approved for their growth-promoting, anti-inflammatory, and antioxidative properties. Herbal essential oils contain many bioactive components with powerful antibacterial, antioxidative, and immunostimulant potentials, suggesting their application for aquatic animals. Essential oils can be provided via diet and can benefit aquatic animals by improving their well-being and health status. The use of essential oils in aquafeed has been studied in a variety of aquatic animals to determine their beneficial roles and optimum doses. The outputs illustrated that herbal essential oils are exciting alternatives to antibiotics with prominent growth promotion, antioxidative, and immunostimulant roles. Herein, we reviewed the beneficial roles of essential oils in aquaculture. This review also aims to describe trends in herbal essential oils use, mainly in commercial fish species, and to analyze different factors that affect essential oils’ efficacy on the growth performance, antioxidative, and immune responses of finfish species.

Effect of Oreganum (Origanum vulgare L.) essential oil on some immune parameters of the Nile tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus)

“…Histopathological findings revealed hyperplasia of melanomacrophage centers in spleen .This result came in parallel to the hematological and immunological results in the current study, confirming the improvement in the hematopoietic system and the innate immune response expressed by the up-regulation of TNF-α and IL-1β proving the role of essential oils as immunostimulants and disease resistance (Dawood et al, 2022).…”

Dietary Methanolic Extract of Fenugreek Enhanced the Growth, Haematobiochemical, Immune Responses, and Resistance against Aeromonas hydrophila in Nile Tilapia, Oreochromis niloticus

“…Te results also showed improved immune and antioxidative responses as well as high resistance to Aeromonas hydrophila infection in Nile tilapia. Te obtained results confrm the hypothesis of the necessity of adding herbal extracts to sustain the productivity of fnfsh species [52]. In the same line, Yu et al [21] reported that fenugreek seed extract enhanced the biochemical blood indices, antioxidative capacity, and immune response of blunt snout bream.…”

Effects ofMoringa oleifera‐based diets on growth, immunological responses, liver antioxidant biomarkers and expression of immune‐related genes in Nile tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus) raised in hapa‐in‐pond system

“…Medicinal plants and their extracts, bioactive functional constituents and essential oils have been succeeded in strengthening the immunity, antioxidant status and improving growth rates of several aquaculture fish (Ahmadifar et al, 2021;Dawood et al, 2021;Dawood et al, 2022) analysis of the compounds present in MOL (Figure 1 and Table 2)…”

“…Medicinal plants and their extracts, bioactive functional constituents and essential oils have been succeeded in strengthening the immunity, antioxidant status and improving growth rates of several aquaculture fish (Ahmadifar et al, 2021; Dawood et al, 2021; Dawood et al, 2022). M. oleifera is well‐known to have numerous health advantages that have been accredited to its phytochemicals like flavonoids and phenolic compounds (Verma et al, 2009; Vongsak et al, 2013).…”