Prebiotic Applications in Cultured Crayfish and Shrimps

Aquaculture is one of the fastest growing and promising sectors of food production all over the world. In commercial aquaculture, it is very important to elevate disease resistance, feed efficiency and growth performance of cultured aquatic species. If these are realized, overall production costs would be remarkably reduced. Antibiotics has been widely used in aquaculture to alleviate infectious diseases or to promote growth performance. On the other hand, indiscriminate use of antibiotics and some chemical drugs in aquaculture has led to potential negative effects on the environment as well as human health. Therefore, functional dietary supplements, such as prebiotics, probiotics and synbiotics have been increasing importance as an environment friendly method to improve the health of fish and crustaceans. In this review, the effects of prebiotics are focused. Prebiotics are nondigestible feed ingredients that can positively affect the animal organism by stimulating the activity and growth of beneficial native bacteria in the gastrointestinal tract and eliminate the pathogenic ones. Despite the potential benefits to health and growth performance as noted in various terrestrial animals and fish, the use of prebiotics in crustacean has been less investigated. The purpose of this review is to discuss the effects of dietary prebiotics on growth performance, survival rate, digestive enzyme activities and intestinal morphology in shrimp and crayfish cultivation. The most commonly used prebiotics in such applications are mannanoligosaccharides (MOS), fructooligosaccharides (FOS), GOS (galactooligolosaccharide), isomaltooligosaccharides (IMO), xylooligosaccharides (XOS) and inulin.