Both lab and on-farm feeding trial research, funded by the Illinois soybean checkoff, show species such as hybrid striped bass and largemouth bass can effectively digest higher amounts of soybean meal when blended with meal derived from Asian carp.
“The research may solve several challenges for Midwestern fisheries and the aquaculture industry,” said Jesse Trushenski, associate professor at SIU’s Center for Fisheries Aquaculture and Aquatic Sciences in Carbondale, Ill.
“The fish diets we studied use meal from Asian carp, an invasive fish that is spreading and disrupting ecosystems in the Mississippi River Basin. Blending carp meal and soybean meal allowed us to use larger amounts of soybean meal. And, these diets offer a local alternative to marine-based fish meal.”
A bacterium causing an epidemic among catfish farms in the southeastern US is closely related to organisms found in diseased grass carp in China, according to researchers at Auburn University in Alabama and three other institutions.
Mr Liles and colleagues studied the molecular epidemiology of the epidemic-causing A. hydrophila to try to trace its evolution. They compared samples of the bacteria to 264 known Aeromonas strains in an international database. Only one virulent strain came close to matching the one sampled from Alabama: ZC1, isolated from a diseased grass carp in China's Guangdong Province. ZC1 was isolated from fish that had experienced an epidemic outbreak atypical of Aeromonas infections.
Peru's aquaculture exports have increased during the first quarter of this year. Figures from the Association of Exporters (ADEX) show that aquaculture exports amounted to $89.4 million during the first quarter of 2014, an increase of 62 per cent over the same period in 2013.
The growth experienced by the industry in the first three months is linked to the better performance of its two main products: shrimp and scallops.
