Intensive cultivation of animals reared for human consumption makes them susceptible to stresses arising from overcrowding, heat, ammonia accumulation and diseases. Nutritional supplements and biological actives have gained prominence in improving stress and disease tolerance to ensure high productivity. Seaweeds are a rich source of natural biological actives that can be extracted using scalable technologies.
We have specifically extracted biologically active compounds from red seaweeds and administered them to commercially cultivated species of shrimp and fish to understand its effect on increasing survival, tolerance to temperature and salinity stresses, as well as resistance to bacterial diseases in lab and field experiments.
We find that the red seaplant extract improves survival of P. monodon larvae by upto 20%, increases resistance of P. monodon larvae to Vibrio harveyi infection by at least 50%, and enhances the survival of P. monodon post-larvae by upto 35% (relative to control). The same extract also increases both survival and tolerance to salinity stress of L. vannamei post-larvae upto 13% and 19% respectively. Interestingly, the yield of Tilapia fry, by weight, also increases by upto 38% by including this extract in their feed. In addition, Tilapia fry also showed higher survival of upto 31% relative to control.
Our results indicate that red seaweed extracts possibly stimulate the immune systems of these animals to sustain the stresses of intensive cultivation. We present a natural and sustainable feed additive from red seaweed that improves animal health and productivity to meet the increasing demand for meat protein.