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Because of health and environmental concerns, the use of chemotherapeutic agents has been restricted in many countries over recent years. This restriction has resulted in a demand for alternative strategies to improve aquaculture production and enhance disease resistance. Among these options, probiotics, live micro-organisms that confer a health benefit to the host by providing both a nutritional benefit and protection against pathogens, represent an important option for the management ...

The Mediterranean Sea is the biggest marginal sea of the Earth and is at the centre of the life for several millions of people. Seafood is consumed widely in this region, with an average of 16.5 kg ⁄ capita ⁄ year, and one-fourth of the seafood supply comes from aquaculture activities. The Mediterranean aquaculture sector has expanded in recent decades. Production increased by 77% over the past decade reaching about 1.3 million metric tonnes in 2009. The total value of production was ar...

Over the past few decades, Asian aquaculture production has intensified rapidly through the adoption of technological advances, and the use of a wide array of chemical and biological products to control sediment and water quality and to treat and prevent disease outbreaks. The use of chemicals in aquaculture farms has raised environmental concerns owing to their potential impacts on downstream aquatic ecosystems. Currently little is known about the environmental fate and effects of the ...

Heat shock proteins (Hsps) are robustly induced by diverse stressors that denature proteins. In addition to stress resistance, Hsps are involved in the folding of nascent proteins, plant and animal development, aging, environmental adaptation and the immune response, demonstrating the fundamental importance of these proteins to cell survival. Heat shock proteins are induced in aquatic organisms by perturbations of temperature and salinity, environmental contaminants, handling, hormones ...

Pests of bivalve aquaculture are a challenging problem that can reduce productivity, profitability and sustainability. A range of pest management approaches have been developed for bivalve aquaculture, but a general absence of guiding frameworks has limited the scale and permanency of implementation. Applying principles of ‘integrated pest management’ (IPM) could change this paradigm to improve economic and environmental outcomes. We reviewed existing research and tools for pest management...

Aquaculture plays a crucial and rapidly increasing role in supplying human foodstuff, with a contribution close to exceeding that of fisheries (some 80 million tons in 2010). Though not harvested, the man-made microalgae production on the basis of freshwater plankton-feeding fish (50% of total aquaculture production) was much higher than total aquaculture and of the order of potatoes or fresh vegetables. Filtering mollusks consuming natural phytoplankton represented 18% of total aquacultu...

In the past few decades, the major compelling force in the study of marine lipids has been the need of the developing aquaculture industry to understand the lipid nutritional requirements of farmed fish so as to optimize production. At present, there is also increased interest to include health-promoting nutrients (nutraceuticals) in farmed foods, such as conjugated linoleic acid (CLA). Conjugated linoleic acid, a group of positional and stereoisomers of linoleic acid (18:2), acts as a ...

China has dominated global aquaculture production for more than two decades. Aquaculture production in China increased from 24.6 million metric tons (mmt) in 2000 to 47.5 mmt in 2014, an increment of 93.1%. Along with the fast-growing aquaculture industry, aquafeed production in China increased from 5.1 mmt in 2000 to 19.0 mmt in 2014, an increment of 272.5%. However, despite the rapid increase in aquafeed production, the fishmeal usage in aquafeeds in China has remained stable over the...

Individual selection for growth rate has been practised for aquatic species for many years. However, the use of a small number of breeders without records of parentage frequently results in inbreeding depression. AKVAFORSK began the first ever family-based breeding program in aquaculture in 1975 for Atlantic salmon in Norway. The first steps of the program involved estimating the phenotypic and genetic parameters of economically important traits and generating a base population by cross...

Africa harbours a rich biological diversity of native fish resources. Recognition of the potential to use these resources to make significant contributions towards improving African food security through aquaculture has existed for some time. A key challenge, however, is achieving compatibility between the two urgent, but sometimes conflicting, goals of reducing poverty and food insecurity in Africa through aquaculture development while paying due attention to the conservation of natura...

Recently there has been a paradigm shift in the focus of aquaculture planning from a top-down to a demand-driven approach. Demand-driven planning for aquaculture development emphasizes that aquaculture development must meet the needs and priorities of stakeholders, and requires processing vast amounts of information ranging from opinions and verbalized needs from primary stakeholders to quantitative data on demand from various stakeholders. However, such an approach is rarely adopted in...

The Brazilian Government has been promoting studies on the zoning and demarcation of aquaculture parks dedicated to the production of fish in net-cages in the large public reservoirs of the country. The methodology employed for the zoning of these aquaculture parks consists of the execution in three consecutive stages of multidisciplinary evaluations for their social, environmental and economical characterization (global, regional and local). The purpose of the studies involves the gene...

The diversity of ichthyofauna in Hellenic freshwaters is highlighted by the presence of 161 species. This actually represents 27.8% of the total fish species recorded in European freshwater, including both native and introduced species, suggesting that Greece represents a ‘hot spot’ for biodiversity. The introduction of alien species for restocking, the aquarium trade and aquaculture was responsible for the deliberate or accidental release of alien specimens into open waters and in some...

Integrated multi-trophic aquaculture (IMTA) seeks to biodiversify fed aquaculture (e.g. finfish or shrimps) with extractive aquaculture, recapturing the inorganic (e.g. seaweeds) and organic (e.g. suspension- and deposit-feeders) nutrients from fed aquaculture for their growth. The combination fed ⁄ extractive aquaculture aims to engineer food production systems providing both biomitigative services to the ecosystem and improved economic farm output through the co-cultivation of complem...

Organic aquaculture has recently attracted attention from both researchers and industry. Organically produced aquatic products are increasingly available to consumers and, in particular, sea bass and sea bream from certified farms in Greece have been exported and also channelled to large retail markets in Greece since 2008. The current paper briefly reviews issues pertaining to global organic aquaculture and national organic and conventional aquaculture production with a special focus o...

Although aquaculture continues to be the fastest-growing food-producing industry worldwide, the sector faces important challenges with respect to controlling infectious diseases. Indeed, the frequent use of antibiotics, which are traditionally the most important line of defence against bacterial disease, has raised problems related to the development and spread of resistance. As a result, we currently are in a race to develop novel therapeutics that should allow us to continue controllin...

Aquaculture is the fastest growing food-producing sector in the world. It is developing, expanding and intensifying in almost all regions of the world. The global population is increasing, thus, the demand for aquatic food products is also increasing. Production from capture fisheries has levelled off and most of the main fishing areas have reached their maximum potential. Sustaining fish supplies from capture fisheries will, therefore, not be able to meet the growing global demand for ...

From a genetic resources viewpoint, emerging aquaculture species and species groups are examined mainly in terms of food use. In addition, we include species that are becoming increasingly important for biodiversity conservation and related ecotourism aspects. Together with ornamental fish species, we argue that these species are facing increasing vulnerability and warrant attention. Our intention is to raise awareness of the potential for increasing production and revenues from emergin...

Molluscs are major aquaculture species worldwide. Molluscan aquaculture accounts for approximately 27% of the total world aquaculture production. The use and exchange of genetic resources have played an important role in the development of molluscan aquaculture. The introduction and use of nonnative species have been instrumental in oyster and scallop aquaculture; for example, the Pacific oyster, translocated from Japan, supports major aquaculture industries in many countries of North a...