The AQUAEXCEL3.0 TransNational Access (TNA) program has had yet another success: one of its participants, Kiranpreet Kaur, Director R&D, Fish Health & Nutrition of Aker BioMarine in Norway presented her TNA research findings at one of the world’s largest aquaculture industry events: Aqua Nor 2023 in Trondheim (Norway).
Kiran did her research on “The effect of krill meal inclusion on the growth of juvenile gilthead seabream”. Feed is the most expensive part of fish aquaculture, attributing to around 60-70% of the production cost. Current fishmeal replacement feed recipes consist of high amounts of plant-based ingredients which are known to have low bioavailability of nutrients. Hence, it is important to produce feeds by including functional ingredients that could enhance the bioavailability and utilization of nutrients, which would be beneficial towards improving fish health and performance.
Kiran’s results demonstrate that krill meal inclusion leads to better utilization of nutrients in feed, and hence could significantly reduce the amount of feed needed to achieve the desired growth or biomass, which provides economic benefits to farmers. In addition, it is beneficial to the environment by reducing the feed waste. Her trial demonstrated the benefit of krill meal inclusion on enhancing the growth of juvenile gilthead seabream by significantly reducing the feed conversion ratio. The results indicate that krill meal inclusion enables the seabream larvae to better utilize the feed nutrients and hence reduced amount of feed would be needed, which is beneficial for the industry and for the environment.