Impacts of replacing dietary fish meal with poultry by-product meal on growth, digestive enzymes and gut microbiota, biomarkers of metabolic and immune response, and resistance to Vibrio challenge in abalone (Haliotis discus hannai)

A 110-day feeding trial was carried out to investigate the impacts of replacing dietary fish meal (FM) with poultry by-product meal (PBM) on growth performance, digestion, gut microbiota, immunity, and disease resistance of abalone Haliotis discus hannai (initial weight: 22.53 & PLUSMN; 0.21 g). The control diet (PBM0) without PBM contained 20% of FM. Based on PBM0, the other four isonitrogenous (about 30% of crude protein) and isolipidic (about 4% of crude lipid) diets were formulated replacing 25, 50, 75 and 100% of FM by PBM (designated as PBM25, PBM50, PBM75 and PBM100), respectively. Every diet was fed to triplicate cages (40 x 35 x 70 cm) with 60 abalones per cage. At the end of the feeding trial, abalones were starved for 3 days and anesthetized with 5% ethanol before sampling. Results indicated that biomass gain of the abalone fed PBM75 (916.71 g) and PBM100 (659.93 g) was significantly lower than that of the abalone fed PBM0 (1222.51 g). Feed conversion ratio of the abalone fed PBM50 (2.93), PBM75 (2.89) and PBM100 (4.04) were significantly higher than that of the abalone fed PBM0 (2.37). The muscle crude protein content of the abalone fed PBM100 (16.01% wet weight) was significantly lower than that of the abalone fed PBM0 (16.67% wet weight). Activities of trypsin and & alpha;-amylase in the digestive gland in the PBM100 group (309.21 and 0.064 U/mg prot., respectively) were significantly lower than the PBM0 group (463.57 and 0.078 U/mg prot., respectively). When the substitution levels rose over 50%, expressions of phosphatidylinositol 3 kinase, threonine kinase/protein B, mammalian target of rapamycin and eukaryotic translation initiation factor 4E in muscle were significantly reduced, while 4E binding protein was significantly increased. The most abundant phyla across the abalones' gut were Proteobacteria and Firmicutes. Catalase (from 2.90 to 1.69 U/mL), superoxide dismutase (from 98.93 to 74.39 U/mL), lysozyme (from 345.86 to 247.81 U/mL) and acid phosphatase (from 21.68 to 15.71 U/100 mL) activities in cell-free hemolymph were markedly decreased with substitution level increasing. When the replacement levels rose over 50%, myeloid differentiation primary response gene 88 and tumor necrosis factor & alpha; expressions in the digestive gland were markedly upregulated, while & beta;-defensin and mytimacin 6 expressions were markedly downregulated. The cumulative mortality of abalone challenged with Vibrio parahaemolyticus (1.0 x 107 CFU/mL) for 7 days was remarkably increased in the PBM50 (83.49%), PBM75 (89.56%) and PBM100 (100%) groups compared with the PBM0 group (58.82%). In conclusion, 50% of dietary FM could be replaced by PBM without influencing abalone growth. When the replacement level was over 50%, the growth and immunity of abalone were decreased, and the mTOR pathway was negatively affected.

Automated summary

This study investigates the effects of replacing fish meal with poultry by-product meal on the growth performance, digestion, gut microbiota, immunity, and disease resistance of abalone. The results show that replacing 50% of fish meal with poultry by-product meal does not affect the growth of abalone, while replacement levels over 50% decrease the growth and immunity of abalone.