MICROALGAL FEEDS FOR AQUACULTURE

The concurrent trends of increasing consumption of seafood and decreas ing natural harvests will dictate that a larger portion of seafood mus t be derived from aquaculture in the 21st century. The difficulty of p roducing economically large quantities of microalgal feeds is currentl y one of the major impediments to the further development of the aquac ulture industry. Traditional methods, which rely on photosynthetic gro wth in outdoor ponds or indoors under artificial lights, suffer from t he phenomenon of light-limitation of biomass density. Certain species of microalgae are capable of heterotrophic growth to high density util izing sugars or other organic compounds for energy and cell carbon. Th is paper reviews work with strains of heterotrophic algae that have de monstrated potential as both nutritional feeds and for economical prod uction by fermentation.