DEVELOPMENT OF A LOW-COST NOVEL ALGAE BASED AQUACULTURE FEED PRODUCT

Meat and dairy production will double and fish production will triple by 2050. Animal feeds play a leading role in the global food industry, and feed is the largest and most important component to ensuring safe, abundant and affordable animal proteins. Feed accounts for 40-60% of the production costs in aquaculture, so access to good quality feeds at reasonable prices is essential for success and profitability in the aquaculture industry. Most fish feeds contain a minimum level of fishmeal in order to ensure an optimal content of amino acids and other nutrients needed for fish growth and flesh quality. Global capture fisheries has been level for several decades, so alternative protein and omega-3 oil sources are needed. Microalgae sources of protein and omega-3 oil could be a tipping point for faster development of mariculture and change the role of some regions such as North America and Europe in global production.

Global Algae Innovations has developed economical, scalable, open pond microalgae production technology that will enable cost competitive production of microalgae for aquaculture feed (Figure 1). Global Algae has also isolated an algae strain that attains 71.4% protein and has an amino acid profile that compares favorably with fishmeal. Combining this strain with a high omega-3 diatom algae would provide a feed profile very similar to fishmeal, so it is likely be a highly favorable aquaculture feed ingredient.

Global Algae Innovations' high protein algae strain and high omega-3 diatom were grown at large-scale utilizing our low-cost production technology. Data will be presented on the compositional analysis, fatty acid profile, and rainbow trout digestibility trials conducted at the USDA Agricultural Research Service.  These results confirmed the potential of this new algal feed ingredient. The positive data has opened the door for longer-term production tests to generate key metrics needed to support scale-up and more extensive feed trials to validate the efficacy for various species.