Functional food reduces impact of stress
Farmed fish are on a regular basis exposed to numerous environmental stressors in addition to suboptimal diets like soybean concentrates containing several anitinutritional factors. This may eventually lead to leaky guts, compromized immunity and low level inflammation challenging fish health and welfare. Many of these challenges are difficult to reduce and eliminate. The use of functional food is a possibility to strengthen barrier functions and immunity repairing some of the damages caused by the environmental and nutritional factors. The result will then be improved welfare of farmed fish.
The present study will use various functional feed components to assess their effect on reducing stress responses and improved immune function following acute exposure to a stressor.
180 salmon post-smolt will distributed into 6 tanks and fed a control diet and an experimental diet containing functional feed components for 5 weeks. All ingredients are available and used in commercial aquaculture. The fish will then be subjected to acute stress (paper appendaged) and sampled for analysis of barrier function and immune parameters at t=0, 1, and 24 h post stress. The stress is regarded as relatively mild and can be compared to transportation and other handling the fish are exposed to in aquaculture. No damages are expected on the fish.
The trial involves studies of whole organisms and cannott be done on cell cultures of organs. The number of fish in each tank is 30. Of these 15 will be sampled at end of trial. We expect that some fish will be nonfeeders and not usable for sampling. Further, lowering the number of fish further in each tank will increase the likelihood of social interactions and introducing tank effect influencing the output of the trial. Reducing the number of fish analyzed to below 5 pr tank, increases the possibility to jeopardize statistical precision and is not an option. The trial is part of an MSc thesis.
The present study will use various functional feed components to assess their effect on reducing stress responses and improved immune function following acute exposure to a stressor.
180 salmon post-smolt will distributed into 6 tanks and fed a control diet and an experimental diet containing functional feed components for 5 weeks. All ingredients are available and used in commercial aquaculture. The fish will then be subjected to acute stress (paper appendaged) and sampled for analysis of barrier function and immune parameters at t=0, 1, and 24 h post stress. The stress is regarded as relatively mild and can be compared to transportation and other handling the fish are exposed to in aquaculture. No damages are expected on the fish.
The trial involves studies of whole organisms and cannott be done on cell cultures of organs. The number of fish in each tank is 30. Of these 15 will be sampled at end of trial. We expect that some fish will be nonfeeders and not usable for sampling. Further, lowering the number of fish further in each tank will increase the likelihood of social interactions and introducing tank effect influencing the output of the trial. Reducing the number of fish analyzed to below 5 pr tank, increases the possibility to jeopardize statistical precision and is not an option. The trial is part of an MSc thesis.