Improving Commercial Fish Meal Free Aquaculture Diets

Domestic US aquaculture is moving toward fishmeal replacement in aquafeeds with a variety of alternative protein sources including plant-based, terrestrial and marine proteins. In our Phase I work we showed the feasibility of modifying the protein quality of several alternate protein sources, specifically animal byproduct meals, and its potential significant impacts on marine fish production. The next step in our Phase II is to continue this work focused upon fishmeal-free aquafeeds using specifically rendered and formulated ingredients made as complete diets in our new feedmill for feed testing and commercial production. Furthermore our work suggests that processing of specific feed ingredients destroys or modifies essential micronutrients resulting in poorer performances under commercial aquaculture conditions and we will work with modifications of these ingredient exposed to modified processes to formulate and manufacture fish meal free production diets and conducting extensive feeding trials with representative marine, brackish and freshwater aquaculture species, thereby correlating the presence of absence of these nutrients back to production performance. These feeds will be tested and sold to U.S. aquaculture producers targeting feed development toward marine and freshwater species for expected international and domestic adoption based on analysis of the economic variables and marketing of the final aquafeeds.