Driven by increasing demand from consumers for healthy seafood that’s rich in nutrients and responsibly raised, stakeholders across the supply chain, from salmon farmers and feed producers to retailers, have been challenged to rethink how fish are fed. This has led to unprecedented development activity in novel aquaculture feed ingredients, including insect meal, single cell ingredients, and algae.
Algae has emerged as one of the first of these novel ingredients to be adopted at scale and AlgaPrime™ DHA, Corbion’s algae omega-3 ingredient, has been produced at scale and incorporated into salmon feed since 2016. Algae omega-3s have catapulted to the top of novel ingredient adoption in aquaculture feed, in part due to the looming constraints of fish oil.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), global consumption of farmed seafood has surpassed wild seafood and is an important contributor to food security and healthier populations. In fact, aquaculture is one of the fastest growing food producing sectors in the world. One of the reasons why salmon is a very popular seafood choice is that it is one of the best sources of important long chain omega-3s (EPA and DHA fatty acids). Long chain omega-3s are found in the fish filet because salmon eat forage fish and accumulate high levels of omega-3s. Thus, when salmon are farmed, fish oil is a critical nutrient in the feed as it is the primary source of long-chain omega-3s. As aquaculture continues to grow, fish oil supplies are not expected to keep up with this growth.
Opportunity for innovation
Recognising this looming resource constraint, scientists turned to the original source of long chain omega-3s: marine microalgae. In the wild, marine microalgae are at the base of the food chain for fish. By growing marine microalgae via fermentation, Corbion, a Netherlands-based ingredients company, are producing an abundant, clean and sustainable source of long chain omega-3s called AlgaPrime™ DHA, that can help towards reducing the dependency on fish oil in aquaculture feed and help improve fish health, ocean health, and our own health.
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