Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
aim of improving the general health, well-being and/or performance of aquatic farmed
animals. Even though more research is still necessary to better understand the role of the
intestinal microbiota in aquatic animal physiology and its underlying mechanisms of actions,
some promising candidates for applications in aquaculture have been identified and can be
considered for industrial scale-up.
During the last two decades aquaculture has embraced industrial applications, notably of
probiotics, and this has truly taken off in some countries in South East Asia as well as in Central
and South America. In the European Union (EU), Canada and China, regulatory rules and con-
straints have greatly impeded the growth of similar uptake as fairly demanding pre-marketing
authorization is first required. One could therefore argue that a more thorough knowledge
and understanding of the biological and physiological effects of probiotics on aquatic animals
could be a prerequisite to enabling the rapid expansion of probiotic applications in aquacul-
ture in these countries. The growing development and application of probiotics in human and
terrestrial farmed animal nutrition has helped to elucidate some of the mechanisms of action
and thus help demonstrate safety in use of certain strains now widely used in industrial feed
applications. These strains are promising candidates for use in aquaculture.
There are several advantages in using probiotics in feed applications:
• First and foremost, at a time of global concern (on human safety grounds) regarding the
continued use of antibiotics as growth promoters, probiotics provide ready to use alterna-
tives.
• Second, farmers could become more familiar with the concept of 'microbial ecosystem
management', which could again lead to a fundamental switch from an anti(biotic) to a
pro(biotic) approach generally considered more environmentally friendly and sustainable.
• Third, the use of probiotics would allow farmers to become innovative, accessing newer
technologies and/or management tools to tackle certain specific issues for which solutions
had not previously been developed and are thus not yet currently available (for example, the
use of probiotics to control and guard against deformities in marine fish larvae).
These benefits are nonetheless often overlooked as industrial probiotic scale-up for aquacul-
ture use still poses a number of challenges. These could include the requirement that any probi-
otics identified for use must be carefully assessed to ensure efficacy as well as optimal protec-
tion of the animals, the farmer, the environment and ultimately the consumers. There are also
factors such as ensuring maximum and consistent efficiency in use as well as consistency in
product quality and composition. These must therefore be carefully considered, and rightly so,
by the regulations (pre-marketing authorizations) imposed by certain countries. Unfortunately,
regulation and/or better still adhering to regulations has yet to apply fully in the aquaculture
sector, where farmers in practice are currently being presented with a plethora of so-called pro-
biotics or bioremediation products with inconsistent quality and unproven beneficial effects.
This could therefore call for a crucial need to review the current probiotic product portfolio.
The other central question that should be asked is:
how can one go from a promising probiotic
candidate identified at laboratory level to a commercial industrial scale application?
We will
try to answer some of these questions in this chapter and will certainly attempt to present some
of the most important steps for optimal industrial scale-up of probiotics for use in aquaculture.
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