Aquatic plant (Aquatic Weed) potential ingredients for fish feed

Abstract

Aquaculture and fisheries continue to be important sources of food, future earnings, nutritional security as well as economic opportunities for hundreds of millions of people worldwide. Fish as the inexpensive source of animal protein accounts for a significant portion of the worldwide food supply, as well as the global fish production sector has the challenge of increasing output to satisfy future protein demand. India has witnessed the growth of freshwater aquaculture from backyard farming to a commercial fish culture where carp remains a mainstay of Indian aquaculture contributing about 87% of the total aquaculture production of our country. In aquaculture practices feed and feeding management practices are play a vital role, about 50-60% of production cost used for feeding management. Nowadays high cost and fluctuating quality of fish meals have led to the need to discover alternative protein sources for feed formulation, considerable emphasis has been focused on the use of the conventional plant, oilseed meals, including soybean, groundnut, cottonseed, and rapeseed meals. The utilization of leaf protein concentrates as dietary feed additives have considerable promise due to the practicality of synthesizing a high-quality protein from tropical and subtropical aquatic plants leaves.