EFFECT OF DIFFERENT LEVELS OF PROTEIN AND CELLULOSE INCLUSION ON GROWTH, SURVIVAL AND BODY COMPOSITION OF JUVENILE FRESHWATER PRAWN Macrobrachium borellii

DÉBORA A. CARVALHO*, PAULA REYES, VERÓNICA WILLINER, CELESTE MORA, FLORENCIA VIOZZI, CRISTIAN J. DE BONIS, PABLO A. COLLINS

Montpellier

Congreso; Aqua 2018; 2018

WAS y EAS

Macrobrachium borellii is a small prawn endemic to South America inhabiting the water bodies of the La Plata basin. Thenatural diet includes animal and vegetable items but the effective use of cellulose and protein requirements is still unknown.We compare the growth performance (weight gain-WG, specific growth rate-SGR, condition factor-CF), survival, proximatecomposition and amino acid profile of prawns fed foods with different levels of fish meal (60%, 45%, 30%) and cellulose(0%, 15%, 30%) inclusion. We related the amino acid quality of foods and prawn muscle through the essential amino acidratio (A/E) and essential amino acid index (EAAI).The diets were fed (10% of total biomass) per triplicated to juvenile prawns during 64 days of controlled conditionsessay at a prawn density of 0.4 prawn/liter. The growth performance in terms of weight gain were found significantlyhigher (p0.05) in the other growth parameters. Survival was not significantly different (p>0.05) between the diets at the endof the experiment and decreased over time in all cases. Although the proximal composition of the food was significantlydifferent, that difference was not reflected in the proximal composition of the muscle (Table 1). We identified 16 aminoacids in the prawn?s muscle of which nine were essentials with the following importance order: Lysine > Leucine >Arginine > Fenilalanine > Isoleucine > Valine > Threonine > Methionine > Histidine. Regarding the three diets, they all hadan EAAI greater than 1. The limiting EAA in the diets were Arginine, Methionine and Lysine. According to these results,a food elaborated with an inclusion of 45% of fishmeal (around 12% of crude protein) and 15% of cellulose could sustainthe growth of the prawn with a performance similar of the diet with more fishmeal inclusion. This result would indicatethat the prawn could be using the cellulose for energy and that 12% of crude protein in the feed is sufficient to maintain thegrowth. In addition, the diets used showed a good quality in terms of EAA. This study provides an initial approach to thedevelopment of artificial foods specifically designed for the native prawn M. borellii. Future studies should focus the effortsin the digestibility of nutrients and in the replacement of fishmeal by more sustainable protein sources.