Shrimp Soluble Extract – Novel Feed Attractant For Aquaculture

Prof. Le Thanh Hung

Faculty of Fisheries

Nong Lam University, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

lthungts@yahoo.com.vn

Summary:

Vietnam Organic applied an enzymatic hydrolysis process on shrimp head waste to produce a shrimp soluble extract (SSE) feed attractant containing a mixture of free amino acids and peptide. The product comprises of 20% crude protein thus having high protein digestibility. During testing, fishmeal-free pelleted feed, that included SSE at a 2% dosage, improved survival and exhibited the same growth and feed-conversion performance in tilapia as that achieved using a 5%- fishmeal diet.

Aquatic animals possess a sharper sense of smell and taste, compared to land animals. Hence, in feed formulation for fish and shrimp, feed attractant is a fundamentally important additive. The most effective attractant compounds for aquatic animals are free amino acids that are rich in squid and shrimp extracts. Squid liver meal, squid meal, fish soluble, shrimp soluble, and other mixtures are often used as feed attractants in the aqua-feed industry. In chitin production from shrimp head waste, the main commercial process is based upon demineralization by acid treatment and deproteinization by alkali treatment. These treatments generate a source of polluted water containing high acidity and alkalinity. In recent years, researchers, including Nellie Gagné, Jozef Synowiecki and Asbjørn

Gildberg, have introduced several enzymatic deproteinization processes as alternative treatments for alkali digestion, to reduce environmental impact and generate a protein hydrolysate with a well-balanced amino acid composition.

Vietnam Organic, a company based in Ca Mau province, applied the enzymatic hydrolysis process on shrimp head waste to produce a shrimp soluble extract (SSE) comprising a mixture of free amino acids and peptide. The product is a soluble of 20% crude protein with protein digestibility of 90 to 95% and 11.45 ppm astaxanthin.

The product also contains 1.47% aspartic acid, 0.71% serine, 2.33% glutamic acid, 1.43% glycine, 0.56% histidine, 1.22% arginine, 0.83% threonine, 2.17% alanine, 1.01% proline, 0.23% cystine, 0.64% tyrosine, 1.14% valine, 0.46% methionine, 0.95% lysine, 0.90% isoleucine, 1.43% leucine and 1.04% phenyl alanine.