Evaluation of Dietary Supplementation of Sargassum horneri for Pacific White Shrimp Litopenaeus vannamei

Abstract

This study was conducted to evaluate dietary supplementation of Sargassum horneri (SH) meal on growth performance, feed utilization, innate immunity, antioxidant capacity and disease resistance of Pacific white shrimp. The diets were added with graded levels of SH meal by 0, 0.5, 1, 2, 4 and 8% (designated as Con, SH0.5, SH1, SH2, SH4 and SH8, respectively). Quadruplicate groups of shrimp were hand-fed with one of the diets five times daily for 39 days. The innate immunity and antioxidant capacity of shrimp were significantly improved by the dietary SH supplementation. The cumulative survival of shrimp exposed to Vibrio parahaemolyticus in a challenge was higher in shrimp group fed SH diets, except for SH8, than that of shrimp fed the control diet. Growth performance and feed utilization of the shrimp were significantly decreased with the dietary SH inclusions except for 0.5%. Results indicated that dietary SH meal could be used as a functional supplement for improvements in innate immunity, antioxidant capacity and disease resistance in Pacific white shrimp. The suggested dietary inclusion level of dried SH is approximately 0.5% for the shrimp.