Nutritional Strategies to Improve Sustainable Aquaculture Development

Dear Colleagues,

Aquaculture is one of the fastest growing food-producing sectors in the world, with an average annual growth rate of over 5.5% per year (FAO 2020), and for this reason it is considered one of the livestock sectors that is able to support the global demand of animal products (Engle et al., 2017). Fish meal (FM) and soybean meal are conventional protein sources used in aquafeeds. Aquaculture uses around 60% of current FM production and about 80% of fish oil production (FAO 2020). However, the use of these conventional feeds is no longer sustainable as they cause dramatic dependencies on imports, an increase in feed costs and a decrease in local farmers’ possibility to obtain high quality feeds (Boyd 2015). The search for alternatives to conventional aquafeeds still represents a major challenge for the sustainability of intensive aquaculture, which must meet the nutritional requirements of the animals in order to ensure their health and welfare.

In addition, feed wastes still represents a sticking point of the aquaculture industry. Bad feeding management entails that a part of the feed is lost to the environment instead of being directed towards animal growth. Precision fish farming applies control-engineering principles to fish production (Føre et al., 2018), resulting in a much lower feed waste, costs and environmental footprint. In order to overcome these issues, further studies that target fish nutrition, feeding strategies, alternative raw materials and precision fish farming are requested.

This Special Issue will provide some recommendations for improving nutrition and feeding and, thus, provide research investigations that support sustainable aquaculture development.

Therefore, original manuscripts that use multidisciplinary approaches and address any aspects of fish nutrition and feeding precision fish farming, with a direct impact on the fish farming, welfare, health and meat quality, are welcome. 

Dr. Sihem Dabbou
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Aquaculture Journal is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1000 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• sustainable aquaculture
• alternative raw materials
• precision fish farming
• fish welfare
• fish nutrition