Fish Nutrition: plant source as an alternative

The aquaculture sector is potentially the world’s most important fish food provider for human consumption. Fish nutrition plays a major role in aquaculture as it influences the growth of stock for production. Fishmeal, which is the most conventional protein source, is a very expensive protein source in fish feed production. The increasing cost of fishmeal is due to the decrease in marine supplies and increase in demand from various other sectors of feed industry. Therefore aquaculture is looking for alternative suitable protein sources, which could replace this limited resource. This has resulted on the ongoing search for suitable alternatives that are befitting without compromise. Plant protein has been the only easy alternative that is readily available and is also lower in cost when compared to fish meal. This review focuses on five major plant protein source namely soybean, rapeseed, sesame seed, cotton seed and sunflower which have been suggested by several researchers and have the needed potentials in terms of protein content and can be used to supplement if not replace the role of fish meal in fish nutrition so as to reduce the cost of feed and also boost the income of farmers.