Partial or total replacement of fish meal by solid state fermented soybean meal with Saccharomyces cerevisiae in diets for Indian prawn shrimp, Fenneropenaeus indicus, Postlarvae

A grow-out experiment was designed to investigate the effect of substitution of dietary fish meal (FM) with solid state fermented soybean meal (SSF-SBM) with yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) on growth performance, feed utilization and palatability of white shrimp, Fenneropenaeus indicus postlarvae (PL) for 90 days. A total of 225 F. indicus PL with an average weight of 0.02 ± 0.018 g were equally distributed over 15 glass aquaria (15 PL, 80 L each triplicate per treatment). Five isonitrogenous (400 g/ kg crude protein and isocaloric 19.5 MJ/ kg gross energy) were formulated. The control diet (FS0) contained fish meal (FM) as the main protein source. In the other diets, FM was partially replaced (on a protein basis) with 25% (FS25), 50% (FS50), 75% (FS75) or 100% (FS100) solid state fermented soybean meal (SSF-SBM). The results showed that survival (SR), final body weight (FBW), weight gain (WG) and specific growth rate (SGR) were significantly decreased with the increasing dietary level of SSF-SBM. The results indicate that SSF-SBM with yeast, S. cerevisiae, is an acceptable alternative plant protein source that can replace up to 50% of dietary FM protein in diets of Indian white shrimps, F. indicus PL which yields similar growth and production, and is as cost effective, as the control diet.