Salmon can thrive on wood-fuelled feed ingredient

Edotor/mohamed shihab

A new trial suggests that diets containing micro-organisms produced from waste wood look promising for salmon aquaculture.

Arbiom, a US agricultural-biotechnology company which has been working on ways to convert wood into food, have evaluated SylPro as an ingredient in juvenile Atlantic salmon feed. The study, conducted by Matis as part of the SYLFEED project, was designed to demonstrate the nutritional performance SylPro in comparison with conventional plant and animal protein sources.

“These findings indicate that SylPro can be used to replace fish meal or plant-based proteins in feed for juvenile Atlantic salmon, a crucial developmental stage, and deliver equivalent nutritional performance as conventional protein sources up to 20 percent inclusion level,” said Alexandra Leeper, PhD candidate at Matis.

In the study, Atlantic salmon feeds were formulated with Arbiom’s high-protein ingredient as a complement to or replacement for fishmeal and plant-based proteins at various inclusion rates. The study was designed to evaluate the product’s nutritional performance in terms of body weight gain as well as its effects on the gut microbiome, which researchers measured over the course of a five-week trial period.

“SylPro represents a scientifically-backed new protein source for aquaculture feed producers and farmers, which outperforms current commercial protein sources”, said Dr Jon Arnason, senior animal nutritionist at Matis.

The study results showed no statistical difference in body weight gain for SylPro compared to the control diet up to the 20 percent inclusion level. Additionally, there were no differences in fish mortality across treatments.

These results support the results from previous trials evaluating SylPro for use in hybrid striped bass.

“This represents another critical milestone in Arbiom’s path to commercializing the SylPro product as we continue to validate its efficacy across multiple animal feed applications,” said Marc Chevrel, CEO of Arbiom.

SylPro is produced from wood by integrating fractionation and bioconversion technologies to efficiently convert wood residues into fermentable substrates for micro-organism production through pre-treatment and fermentation processes. The final product is a dried yeast, which is nutritional protein source for use in aquafeed, and other animal feeds.

Arbiom has been selected as one of three finalists in the Innovation Awards at the 2019 Global Aquaculture Alliance Leadership (GOAL) event in Chennai, India on October 22-24.