Development of Low-Crop, Low-Fishmeal or Low-Fish Oil Feeds for Aquaculture

Dear Colleagues,

The rapidly growing aquaculture industry heightens pressure for the availability of feed ingredients, in particular fishmeal and fish oil. The stagnating production and fluctuating price of fishmeal and fish oil has been a limiting factor of sustainable development of the aqua-feed industry. Therefore, searching for alternative ingredients has emerged as an urgent task and hotspot of aquaculture nutrition research. Numerous studies have been conducted in this area, traditionally mainly targeting at terrestrially sourced plants. However, despite aquaculture consuming only a small fraction of the feed ingredient resources compared to other animal food production systems, aquaculture competes with the livestock industry and direct human consumption for crop resources. As such, developing novel ingredients or further improving the utilization efficiency of current ingredient sources is essential for overcoming the shortage of feed ingredients in aquaculture. The aim of this Special Issue is to investigate innovative strategies that can develop novel ingredients or improve the utilization efficiency of current low-value ingredients. The primary objective is to highlight research that has investigated alternative feed ingredients, feed additives, feed formulations and feeding systems that can enhance animal growth and health, reduce environmental impact and improve the overall efficiency of animal farming. In this project, original research articles and reviews are welcome.

Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Nutritional strategies that optimize the use of current non-crop and low-value resources;
• Alternative feed ingredients for aquaculture animals, including insects, microalgae and single-cell protein sources;
• Innovative feed formulations that promote animal growth, health, fillet quality and welfare;
• Feeding systems that improve efficiency and sustainability, such as precision feeding and automated feeding systems.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Prof. Dr. Houguo Xu
Dr. Qiang Ma
Guest Editors

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.

• sustainability
• feed ingredient
• aquaculture
• productivity
• feed alternatives