Aquaculture Use of Soybean Meal

Two studies were reported from Australia in which soybean meal was compared to shark meat meal and meat meal for supplying protein in Murray cod and Australian shortfin eel diets. The test ingredients were substituted for the refer-ence diet at a thirty- percent level. Apparent digestibilities of dry matter and protein were slightly higher for shark meal compared to soybean meal and ingredients were higher than values of meat meal. Energy digestibitities were not signifi-cantly different for the three test ingredients. The essential amino acid availabilities for shark meal and soybean meal were significantly higher than the meat meal treatments. The researchers reported that these data together with pre-viously published results suggest that protein digestibilities may provide a fairly reliable indication of the amino acid availability for these species.

DeSilva, S.S., R.M. Gunasekera and G. Gooley. 2000. Digestibility and amino acid availability of three protein-rich ingredients -incorporated diets by Murray cod (Maccullochella peelii (Mitchell) and the Australian shortfin eel (Anguilla australis Richardson). Aquaculture Research 31(2):195-205.