Partial or total replacement of fish meal by solid state fermented soybean meal with Saccharomyces cerevisiae in diets for Indian prawn shrimp, Fenneropenaeus indicus, Postlarvae

A grow-out experiment was designed to investigate the effect of substitution of dietary fish meal (FM) with solid state fermented soybean meal (SSF-SBM) with yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) on growth performance, feed utilization and palatability of white shrimp, Fenneropenaeus indicus postlarvae (PL) for 90 days. A total of 225 F. indicus PL with an average weight of 0.02 +/- 0.018 g were equally distributed over 15 glass aquaria (15 PL, 80 L each triplicate per treatment). Five isonitrogenous (400 g/kg crude protein and isocaloric 19.5 MJ/kg gross energy) were formulated. The control diet (FS0) contained fish meal (FM) as the main protein source. In the other diets, FM was partially replaced (on a protein basis) with 25% (FS25), 50% (FS50), 75% (FS75) or 100% (FS100) solid state fermented soybean meal (SSF-SBM). The results showed that survival (SR), final body weight (FBW), weight gain (WG) and specific growth rate (SGR) were significantly decreased with the increasing dietary level of SSF-SBM. The results indicate that SSF-SBM with yeast, S. cerevisiae, is an acceptable alternative plant protein source that can replace up to 50% of dietary FM protein in diets of Indian white shrimps, F. indicus PL which yields similar growth and production, and is as cost effective, as the control diet. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.