Improving fish gut health and disease resistance by feeding insects and probiotics

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Aquaculture, the farming of fish and aquatic plants, is a $1.4 billion industry in Canada and needs further support to make sure we supply local seafood, create jobs, eat nutritious food and reduce pressures on wild fisheries. One major problem in the aquaculture industry is the use of feeds that contain fishmeal and fish oil, which is not sustainable since it removes fish from the wild to make farmed fish. New alternatives, such as insects and yeast, have been put forward since they can be grown on organic waste streams, but there has not been much research on these ingredients, especially for freshwater fish. Recently, feeding insects and yeast have been found to improve the community of bacteria in the gut of fish and enhance the immune response. Specific fatty acids within insects/yeast and produced by gut bacteria may be key components in stimulating gut health and growth of fish. These mechanisms are not well understood and there is a lack of data on influences of fish species, age, size and disease status when feeding insects and yeast, in addition to components in the feed.The aim of this project is to evaluate sustainable feed additives, such as insects and yeast, on their ability to improve the growth, gut health and immune response of fish. The project will involve rainbow trout, the most farmed fish in Ontario, and zebrafish, an animal model to apply the results to other fish species. We will use advanced nutritional, histological and molecular analyses to perform a meta-analysis and three animal trials with next generation sequencing of 16S rDNA microbiomes and mRNA transcriptomes. This research will support Ontario and Canadian feed companies and aquaculture producers by demonstrating the advantages of these feed ingredients to improve fish production, health and welfare. This project will help form partnerships between two universities (University of Guelph and Laval), a government agency (OMAFRA) and two private feed ingredient companies (Oreka and Alltech) while training 7 HQP.