A new approach to diet optimisation: A re-analysis using European whitefish (Coregonus lavaretus)

There is a need to develop new methods for formulating optimal feeds for farmed fish, and for making explicit assessments of the criteria by which the success of a formulation may be judged. We show how a combination of mixture design theory and state-space models of nutrition (the Geometric Framework, GF) can be used to derive a 5-step protocol for multi-criterion diet optimisation. Step 1 involves selecting the focal nutritional axes for modelling; step 2 uses mixture theory to choose an optimal selection of experimental diets to test in experiments; step 3 entails using GF to plot and interpret intake and growth arrays; step 4 involves plotting response variables onto intake arrays, and step 5 uses multi-criterion optimisation to combine and weigh several relevant response variables. We illustrate the approach by re-analysing data from dietary studies on European whitefish.