Towards Sustainable Aquafeeds: Strategies and Mechanisms of Fish Meal and Oil Replacement

Dear Colleagues,

The scarcity and rising cost of marine-derived ingredients pose a major challenge to the sustainable development of aquaculture. Consequently, replacing fish meal and fish oil with cost-effective, sustainable alternatives—such as plant proteins, insect meals, single-cell proteins, and processing by-products—has become the industry’s primary focus. However, high levels of substitution often lead to reduced growth, enteritis, and compromised flesh quality due to anti-nutritional factors and amino acid imbalances.

This Special Issue, “Towards Sustainable Aquafeeds: Strategies and Mechanisms of Fish Meal and Oil Replacement,” aims to address the physiological and technical bottlenecks associated with novel ingredient utilization. We invite high-quality research exploring the following:

1. Evaluation of emerging raw materials: Efficacy of insect meal, microbial biomass, and fermented plant ingredients.
2. Nutritional strategies: Use of functional additives (e.g., enzymes, bile acids, and probiotics) to improve nutrient digestibility and mitigate anti-nutritional effects.
3. Physiological responses: Impacts of alternative diets on gut health, immune function, and lipid metabolism.
4. Flesh quality: How alternative ingredients affect the texture and nutritional value of the final product.

The goal of this Special Issue is to provide scientific evidence to maximize the inclusion rates of alternative ingredients without compromising fish health or quality.

Dr. Chang'an Wang
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 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

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. Fishes is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly 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 2600 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.