The NCH Life Sciences team has been working on using our probiotic products to help aquaculture farmers improve their production capabilities. We are working in this market segment because seafood holds the current title for the largest traded food commodity in the world providing sustenance to approximately 3 billion people relying on fish meat as a primary source of protein.
Seafood is extremely perishable and is prone to spoilage by opportunistic and pathogenic microorganisms. Gram-negative bacteria such as Shawanella, Aeromonas, Photobacterium, Pseudomonas, and Vibrio are regarded as the significant spoilage bacterial contaminants in seafood.
Vibrio is also linked to white feces syndrome, which is currently affecting Asian Markets. The reduction of Vibrio alleviates the prevalence of tail necrosis, shell disease, red disease, loose shell syndrome, white feces syndrome, and white gut disease. Microbial contaminants with counts above 106-107 cfu/g typically indicate spoilage. Additionally, excessive bacterial growth is known to be responsible for the production of off-odors and off-flavors in seafood products. Seafood freshness and shelf life is crucial in fish product quality assessment and grading for marketability, thus strategies to mitigate the occurrence and reduce the overall microbial load of fish meat is of great importance to the success of the seafood industry. Our probiotic will help reduce this problem, as seen in our results below.
At NCH Life Science’s Aquaculture Research Lab, Nile tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus) were treated over a course of 25 weeks in a Recirculating Aquaculture System (RAS). The study’s aim was to evaluate the beneficial effects of a proprietary Bacillus spore blend of ACTPRO™ probiotics on a treatment group of tilapia. Composite samples of tilapia were analyzed from the probiotic treatment and control groups by a third-party lab for proximate composition (protein, moisture, crude fat, fatty acid profile) testing of fish meat as well as microbial contaminant analysis for coliforms, aerobic plate counts, and molds & yeasts. The probiotic treatment reduced the aerobic plate counts by over a 1,000-fold and had no presence of yeast or mold. Our probiotic group also demonstrated that it is a natural and effective means to prevent or minimize food spoilage and potentially reduce the foodborne outbreaks in seafood.
ACTPRO™ technology treated tilapia had lower meat microbial contaminants and a lower prevalence of disease (fin rot) when compared to the control group. All in all, the beneficial effects of the ACTPRO™ multistrain spore probiotic have clearly demonstrated improvements in enhancing fish flesh quality, immunity, and stabilizing gut health. If you are interested in looking at these results, please contact us through our home page.