Alternative dietary protein and lipid sources for sustainable production of salmonids

The predicted growth of the salmon farming industry will place increasing demands on global supplies of fishmeal and fish oil, the main constituents of salmon feeds. Alternative sources of protein and lipid exist, but many questions remain to be resolved concerning their acceptable dietary levels for culturing Atlantic salmon. In this review, we consider sustainable conventional sources of protein and lipid as well as those that may be developed in the future. Basic information is needed on dietary essential amino acid and fatty acid requirements of Atlantic salmon, as well as information on protein, amino acid and lipid (fatty acid) digestibility, suitable economical processing methods to enhance the protein concentration and/or reduce the presence of antinutritional factors in some ingredients, and development of feed formulations that maintain economical growth and health of the fish, and also maintain product quality for the consumer. NORSK SAMMENDRAG: Dersom verdens havbruksproduksjon av fisk og reker fortsetter å vokse vil vi innen få år få mangel på marine oljer og noe lengre fram i tid også få mangel på fiskemel av god kvalitet. Norges forskningsråd har utarbeidet rapporten "For og formidler - den største utfordringen for norsk havbruk"(Waagø, Torrissen og Austreng, 2001). Fórmidler til norsk havbruksnæring er internasjonale handelsvarer der norsk havbruksnæring konkurrerer med annen havbruks- og dyreproduksjon. Havforskningsinstituttet ønsket å få en internasjonal vinkling på problemet med å skaffe nok fôrråstoff til verdens havbruksproduksjon som et supplement til Forskningsrådets rapport. Vi ba derfor Dr. Ronald W. Hardy, Dr. Dave A. Higgs, Dr. Santosh P. Lall og Dr. Albert G.J. Tacon om å utarbeide en analyse over behov og tilgang på fôrråstoff for verdens havbruksproduksjon, og også angi mulige alternative, framtidige, fôrråstoff. Rapporten er i sin helhet utarbeidet av forfatterne, og Havforskningsinstituttet er ikke nødvendigvis enige i alle analyser og konklusjoner. Vi mener imidlertid at rapporten gir et viktig innspill i debatten om hvor vi skal finne nye fôrråstoff. Nye fôrråstoff som all havbruksproduksjon av karnivore og omnivore dyr vil være totalt avhengige av dersom vi fortsatt ønsker vekst.

Suplementação de taurina em dietas com duas concentrações proteicas para pós-larvas de camarão-branco-do-pacífico

Este estudo foi realizado com o objetivo de avaliar a possibilidade de reduzir a concentração proteica da dieta para pós-larvas de camarão-branco-do-pacífico (Litopenaeus vannamei) por meio da suplementação do aminoácido taurina. Seis dietas práticas, isoenergéticas (15,48 kJ EM/g), foram formuladas para conter duas concentrações de proteína (35% e 45% proteína bruta, PB), com três níveis de suplementação de taurina (0, 5 e 10 g/kg), em arranjo fatorial 2 × 3, com quatro repetições. Cem pós-larvas (peso inicial de 0,14 ± 0,01 g) foram estocadas em cada um dos 24 tanques de 45 litros conectados a um sistema de recirculação de água marinha. As dietas experimentais foram distribuídas aos camarões (10% da biomassa) três vezes ao dia, durante 30 dias. A concentração proteica da dieta não influenciou o crescimento nem a utilização alimentar das pós-larvas, mas o efeito benéfico da suplementação das dietas com taurina foi evidente em ambos os níveis proteicos testados. As póslarvas alimentadas com as dietas com maior concentração de taurina (10 g/kg) alcançaram maior peso final, ganho em peso e taxa de crescimento específico e melhor conversão alimentar em comparação àquelas alimentadas com as demais dietas. A taxa de sobrevivência média foi superior a 92% e não foi afetada pelas dietas experimentais. O nível de 35% de PB na dieta (22,58 mg PB/kJ EM) é suficiente para promover o crescimento adequado de pós-larvas de L. vannamei, e o desempenho dos camarões pode ser melhorado com a suplementação de 10 g taurina/kg de ração.The present study aimed to evaluate the possibility of reducing the dietary protein content for post-larvae of Pacific white shrimp (Litopenaeus vannamei) through diet supplementation with taurine amino acid. Six practical isoenergetic (15.48 kJ ME/g) diets were formulated to contain two protein concentrations (35% and 45% crude protein, CP) and 3 levels of taurine supplementation (0, 5 and 10 g/kg) in a 2 × 3 factorial scheme, with four replicates. One hundred postlarvae (initial weight 0.14 ± 0.01 g) were stocked in each of twenty-four 45–L tanks, connected with recirculating marine water system. Shrimps were fed the experimental diets (10% biomass) 3 times a day for 30 days. Dietary protein concentration did not influence growth neither feed utilization of the post-larvae, but a benefic effect of the diet supplementation with taurine on both protein levels tested was evident. Post-larvae fed diets with the highest taurine supplementation (10 g/kg) achieved significant higher final weight, weight gain, specific growth rate and better feed conversion than those fed the other diets. Average survival rate was greater than 92% and it was not affected by experimental diets. Crude protein level of 35% in the diet (22.58 mg CP/kJ ME) is enough to promote adequate growth of L. vannamei post-larvae and shrimp performance can be improved with supplementation of 10 g taurine/kg of ration

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical science. © The Author(s) 2019. Published by Oxford University Press