Review: A bibliometric survey of live feed for marine finfish and shrimp larval production

Aquaculture research contributes to development of the industry, and practitioners depend on effective and understandable information about research findings. A bottleneck for increased diversification and efficient farming of larvae of marine finfish is lack of sufficient quantities of high quality live feed, that is, copepods. Number of scientific articles and conference contributions' mentioning live feed organisms is considered reflecting research activity and is used here as a proxy indicating awareness of importance amongst aquaculture researchers and producers. The percentage of live feed of total aquaculture articles has steadily declined over the past decades, reaching <= 5%, ranking Artemia first followed by rotifers and then copepods in total frequency in WoS and in conference abstracts except for LARVI. Exponential increase of number of live feed WoS articles is in contrast with a stagnant numerical frequency of WAS and EAS conference abstracts mentioning live feed over time. Since aquaculture practitioners likely not get similar information as researchers there is a risk that exposure to new research will face a time-lag or even not reach these stakeholders and implementation of new discoveries will not happen properly. We imagine it lead to less innovation and diversification in marine finfish and shrimp production and propose a dissemination mitigation strategy.

Automated summary

Aquaculture research is crucial for industry development, but there is a gap in effective communication of research findings to practitioners. The decline in importance of live feed in research articles may hinder innovation and diversification in marine finfish and shrimp production.