Grant: Collaborative Research and Development Grants

Replacing fishmeal with plant protein ingredients is hampered by the presence of antinutritional factors present in virtually all vegetable ingredients. Canola meal is particularly problematic since it contains many deleterious antinutritional factors including saponins, tannins, phytates, glucosinolates and insoluble fibre. Attempts to improve the feeding value of canola meal have concentrated on the production of canola protein concentrate. Although canola protein concentrate has significantly lower levels of antinutritional factors than canola meal, it is not economically viable as an ingredient in aquafeeds due to the high cost of manufacturing this product. An alternative and cheaper approach to reduce the level of ANFs may be fermentation with yeast and/or enzyme pretreatment. Previous studies have reported that the growth performance of fish fed fermented canola meal was significantly better than fish fed conventional canola meal. This proposal aims to examine the effects of feeding yeast-fermented CM combined with supplemented enzyme pretreatment on the nutrient digestibility and growth performance of rainbow trout and Nile tilapia.