Chutima Tantikitti, Duangrat Chookird, and Amornrat Phongdara

DOI: 10.14456/sjst-psu.2016.10

pp. 73 - 82

Abstract

Fishmeal quality is of great importance for production of aquatic animals particularly shrimp; however it varies widely
depending on raw materials and processing methods. A seven week feeding trial was conducted using five diets to examine
effects of fishmeal quality on growth performance, protein digestibility and expression of gene regulating trypsin in
Litopenaeus vannamei. Each test diet was fed four times daily to four groups of shrimp with an average initial weight of 2.2 g
shrimp^-1. The shrimp fed S1-premium grade fish meal (S1-PGFM) diet attained the highest weight gain, specific growth rate
with the best feed conversion ratio (FCR) and protein utilization efficiency. Growth of shrimp fed S2-PGFM, grade 1 FM and
grade 2 FM containing diets was inferior to those of S1-PGFM fed group. The imported FM diet fed group showed the slowest
growth and feed utilization efficiency. FCR of shrimp fed grade 2 FM and imported FM was significantly the poorest (p<0.05).
In-vitro protein digestibility using crude enzyme extract from shrimp fed reciprocal diet was not significantly different
among treatments but in-vivo protein digestibility of the S1-PGFM fed group was the highest (92.06+0.42%) in concordance
with the highest trypsin gene expression