Aquaculture nutrition: turning challenges into opportunities.

Abstract

Food security has become one of the major concerns of governments around the world as the human population rapidly expands. Food security is getting higher priority in this era of revolutionary information technology. Near saturated agriculture and livestock production sectors are struggling to meet the requirements of a growing population, especially for higher quality and cheaper sources of protein. Aquaculture is considered to be a promising potential production sector for high-protein food. In effect, aquaculture must share social responsibilities with agriculture because it is a rising sector in global food production. Blooming global aquaculture can go hand in hand with agriculture to aid in the mission of attaining food security. Aquaculture can be a food production sector for the poor because sh protein can be less expensive than other animal protein sources. However, the dependency of fed aquaculture on costly ingredients reduces its economic viability and limits demand from poorer members of society (Allison 2011). Also, the rise in the proportion of the population that consumes sh demands more from aquaculture than near-stagnant capture sheries.Feed is the greatest fraction of operating cost of fed aquaculture systems and the cost and availability of ingredients limit the growth of fed aquaculture. Thus, sh nutrition is important to the progress of global aquaculture production. However, there are a multitude of challenges associated with the growth of the aquafeed industry and nutrition research. Systematic and technological interventions are essential for making aquaculture operations economical. At present, the aquafeed industry is struggling to include cheaper plant ingredients to replace costly animal protein sources to manufacture cost-effective aquafeeds.