Effect of Trace Minerals Concentration on Growth Performance and Immune Response of White Shrimp (Litopenaeus vannamei)

Abstract

Trace minerals are important because they act as cofactors of a variety of enzymes. They involved improving growth performance, metabolism and immune system of shrimp especially in case of high plant basal feed. Since the insufficient amount of fish meal production due to unsustainable fishery problems, soybean meal has been a major alternative protein source but phytic acid in the plant was the factor to reduced bioavailable of minerals.  So, this research studied the effect of trace mineral concentration in the diets on growth performance and immune response of white shrimps Litopenaeus vannamei. The trial was assigned in CRD with 3 treatments and each of 10 replicates. The diets with 37% crude protein and 5% crude fat were formulated and top up with different trace mineral levels of 1x, 2x and 3x. All diets were fed to shrimps for 28 days and the results showed no significant differences (P>0.05) on all growth performance parameters. Anyway, the numerical values of growth performance had an improving trend when increasing mineral concentrations. Furthermore, an immune response such as total haemocyte count, superoxide dismutase inhibition and glutathione showed no significant difference between treatments (P>0.05) but phenoloxidase activity showed increasing values when minerals concentration had a higher dose and significant difference among the group (P<0.05). Therefore, the results of this study clearly showed an increasing dose of trace minerals in the white shrimp diet trend to promote growth performance and could improve immune response especially phenoloxidase activity.