Prebiotics, Probiotics, and Symbiotics in Fish and Shellfish Nutrition and Feed Technology

Dear Colleagues,

Fish aquaculture, the fastest growing food producing sector, has been facing challenges related to environmental sustainability, animal welfare and profitability. To cope with the increase in demand due to the multiplication in the world population, intensive aquaculture techniques are spreading. Intensive aquaculture entails risks for the sector due to the high density of individuals, which favors the spread of pathogenic bacteria, viruses and parasites with a consequent slowdown in growth, poor product quality and, in extreme cases, severe death rates. The use of antibiotics, vaccines and other conventional pharmacological strategies to manage these pathogens is not always possible and desirable; therefore, the aquaculture industry is focusing on the development of nutritional supplements such as prebiotics and probiotics which play many vital roles in maintaining homeostasis and overall health. The synergistic effects of pre- and probiotics on the growth performance, nutritional efficiency indexes, carcass composition, digestive enzyme activities, blood immunological parameters and stress resistance of cultivable aquatic species were reported in numerous studies. This has led to the development of innovative products, including combinations of prebiotics and probiotics known as synbiotics, that can induce additional effects. 

This SI aims to collect contributions in the form of research articles, reviews and short communications aimed not only at reporting the state of the art on the use of pre–pro and synbiotics, but also predicting the possible applications of next-generation pre- and pro-biotics, a field scarcely investigated in aquaculture.

Prof. Dr. Marina Paolucci
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. 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.

• prebiotics
• probiotics
• synbiotics
• functional feed
• fish and shellfish health
• fish and shellfish quality