Prosopis Pod Meal as an Alternative Aquafeed Ingredient

Abstract

The expanding human population raises the demand for nutritionally-rich food, and fish is the cheapest and best way to meet this requirement. Currently, the stagnation of capture fisheries encourages aquaculture as a means of providing quality proteins to a growing population. A successful aquaculture enterprise incurs a high expenditure of 50-60% on feed costs. Therefore, reducing feed costs by identifying alternative feed ingredients will improve the economic condition of the aquaculture business. Currently, the conventional ingredients used in aquafeed are becoming more expensive, raising the aquafeed's price and thus the overall cost of fish production. Hence, there is a need to transition to low-cost unconventional aquafeed ingredients, and Prosopis pod meal has excellent potential in this context. Prosopis pod meal has a high nutritional value, and it could be substituted conventional ingredients for instance corn meal, wheat flour, rice bran, etc., in aquafeed. This technical review comprises the scope and constraints of employing Prosopis pod meal as an ingredient in aquafeed.