Supplementing Soybean Meal With Camelina (Camelina sativa) In Tilapia Diets And Optimizing Commercial Tilapia Diets For Use In Intensive Systems In The Western Region Of The United States

Abstract

The feed production cost in tilapia diets is driven by the prices of its ingredients such as fishmeal (FM) and soybean meal (SBM). Fishmeal and soymeal combined with other ingredients provides fish with the nutrients required for growth and sustaining life. Soybean meal is used as an alternative to fishmeal, but prices for this traditional ingredient have increased significantly in recent years as a result of high market demand from other industries. Consequently, there has been an increase interest by tilapia nutritionists and feed manufacturers to find less expensive, alternative feedstuffs for use in tilapia diets. Camelina (Camelina sativa) is an oil seed crop grown in higher latitudes especially along the US - Canada border, northern China and northern Europe. Camelina after removal of most of the edible oil has been proposed as a fish feed ingredient. A sixty-day feeding trial was conducted and diets were formulated to contain various levels of camelina inclusion (0, 5, 10, 15, 20 and 25%) for the "camelina meal" while the "camelina oil" was formulated to contain one level (4.7%) of oil and was divided as "raw" and 4.7 "wash". The results indicated that that fishes fed diets containing camelina ingredients had growth performance and feed utilization results that were similar to fish fed the commercial diet (P>0.05). There were significant differences (P<0.05) for body organ indices and body composition. The 15% camelina meal diet was the lowest cost experimental diet per kilogram gain and therefore, this alternative ingredient might be a potential replacement for soymeal in a more cost effective feed formulation. The fatty acid composition of tilapia fillets was also analyzed at the end of the feeding trial. The inclusion of camelina meal and oil in tilapia diets resulted in significant increases in the Omega-3/Omega-6 ratio in fillets when compared to the control. The 15% camelina meal provided the best results of the experimental diets yielding significantly higher polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) and lower saturated fatty aid (SFA) than the control diet. On a commercial scale, tilapia commercial feeds differ in both formulated nutrient levels and ingredient composition. In intensive system culture, natural food is limited making it important that all nutrients are supplied through a complete pelleted diet. An advantage to feeding a pelleted diet is that the pellet-type feed enables the farmers, feed formulators and manufactures to design a diet that provides an optimal nutritional mix for tilapia. Precise levels in the protein and lipid percentages of tilapia diets can reduce feed costs and also reduce the amount of underutilized protein and lipids stored as fat in tilapia. Feed comprises of over 60% of the variable cost in the intensive aquaculture operation; if feed prices were to increase, it would be a substantial amount for tilapia producers to absorb. Therefore an improved diet formulation designed for tilapia can increase profitability. Results indicated that the experimental diets (28% Crude Protein (CP)-Amino Acid (AA), 28% CP and 40% CP) performed similar to the control diet (32% CP) as it relates to fish growth. The experiment conducted on a commercial scale at an operating farm found that feeding tilapia the lowest protein level diets (28% CP) resulted in higher biomass gain per raceway, biomass gain per fish and significantly higher protein efficiency ratio (PER) when compared to the control diet (32% CP). The 28% CP diet also had the second best FCR value and most importantly higher returns based on its FCR when compared to the control diet (32% CP).