Aqua Feed Formulation Software Free Download

The software makes it easy to manage accurate nutritional values, production parameters and recipe specifications, under any conditions and at any time. This means that you can instantly adapt to volatile material costs, ingredient stocks and purchasing positions. BESTMIX Recipe Management effortlessly translates recipes into practical products, while always maintaining the highest standards in formulation, legal requirements and labeling.

The aquafeed industry deals with specific challenges such as sustainability, moisture control, reaching optimal density and dealing with the volatility of ingredients while searching for alternative ones. This requires powerful formulation software.

Ruminants are utilized to convert feed nutrients to human food under widely varying conditions around the world and are a major source of human food nutrients. The goals of improving ruminant nutrition are to improve productivity, reduce resource use, and protect the environment. Further improvements in ruminant production efficiency will result from the use of models to predict nutrient requirements and feed utilization in specific production settings. Accurate prediction of nutrient requirements and supply enable the nutritionist to identify more of the variation in cattle performance than less comprehensive approaches to ration formulation.

As feed is the largest single cost item in aquaculture production, and formulating aquaculture feed requires many combinations of several ingredients and nutrient requirements, this book takes a clear-and -concise approach, providing essential information on formulation and covering relevant available software, feed nutrients, and additives such as enzymes and phytase and conjugated fatty acids, as well as best industry practices to improve aquafeed production.

Dr. Pedro Encarnação has an extensive background in aquaculture and nutrition. He has been involved in several research projects focusing on the improvement of feed formulations for aquaculture species and improving animal performance by the use of feed additives. He has an Honors Degree in Marine Biology and Fisheries and an MSc in Aquaculture from the University of Algarve (Portugal), and obtained is PhD in Animal Nutrition from the University of Guelph (Canada).

Zuridah is the editor and publisher of Aqua Culture Asia Pacific, a magazine that strives to be the beacon for the regional aquaculture industry. She is well known and highly recognised by the public sector, academia and the industry in Asia, primarily and the rest of the world. She has been providing information to the Asia Pacific industry for the past 11 years. She is based in Kuala Lumpur. She began her career in aquaculture and fisheries with the Department of Fisheries, Malaysia in 1977. While in Singapore, she carried out assessments on the mariculture industry and a review on the feed industry in Asia. This was followed with consultancies on the industry in Asia for European companies. When she was based in Europe, Zuridah was the editor of UK based International Aquafeed Magazine for four years and then Asian Aquaculture for three years when she returned to Asia.

Over the last twenty years of his career, Sergio has specialized in assisting the development of responsible fishing and aquaculture practices. He has also developed and implemented comprehensive management and research programs worldwide; product development, ingredient value models, formulation standards and quality assurance programs. He is the author of several book chapters and over 100 publications.

Dr. Dagoberto Sanchez is a Global Aqua Nutrition Consultant, located in Lima, Peru. He has 25 years of career in the aquaculture industry, feed formulation and manufacturing, with multifunctional experience in aquatic nutrition, R&D and aqua-farming. Prior to being a global consultant he supported Skretting as Latin America Business Development Manager and worked for 15 years as the Nutrition and R&D Director in Alicorp (Nicovita). He has an MBA in Peru and Masters Degrees in Mariculture from Texas A&M University and a PhD in Animal Nutrition from Texas A&M University in the USA.

Victor Suresh learned feed formulation at his first job with the Ralston Purina Company that he joined after completing his PhD in aquaculture at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. In the course of his 20 year old professional career he has formulated feeds for aquatic species farmed in Asia and the Americas and has used four different software packages for feed formulation. He presently heads United Research, a firm specializing in formulation and R&D services in the feed sector, and lives in Singapore.

Rapid growth of aquaculture worldwide has become increasingly dependent upon the use of external feed inputs, and in particular upon the use of compound aquafeeds. In addition, changes in production technology and marketing, and changes in feed ingredients are key structural changes necessary for the aquaculture sector to grow (Tacon et al., 2011).

The aquaculture feed industry is responsible for converting raw materials of agricultural origin into feeds. These feeds are not only important in terms of cost but also in terms of nutrition, as some of these feeds are the primary source of animal and plant protein required by cultivated aquaculture species for normal development. In addition, this is a broad industry employing people with a variety of skills, including process engineers, economists, marketing experts, shellfish and fish scientists, regulatory experts, quality control technicians, and transportation and distribution specialists.

Use of locally available raw materials as ingredients in aquaculture feed contributes to a sustainable utilization of resources as well as potential growth in aquaculture production with less environmental impact. In addition, the evaluation of feed ingredients is critical to feed development. It is vital to discriminate the effects on feed intake from the effects on the utilization of nutrients from ingredients for growth and other metabolic processes (Glencross et al., 2007).

Ingredients used in practical aquaculture diets can be classified as protein (amino acid) sources; energy sources; essential lipid sources; vitamin supplements; mineral supplements; and special ingredients to enhance growth, pigmentation, or sexual development in the species, or to enhance physical properties, palatability, or preservation of the feed (Hardy, 2000).

The number of ingredients used to feed aquaculture species in different countries is very high. Moreover, there is considerable variability for each ingredient considering both its chemical composition and its nutritional value, as a result of factors associated with its production or processing. This situation justifies the development of national reference tables adapted to the specificities of each production system.

On the other hand, animal protein ingredients are normally used to balance the amino acid contents of diets and to increase protein content of the final feed. In many countries, feed manufacturers ensure that animal protein ingredients do not fall below minimum levels in fish and shrimp diets, especially for the larvae and juvenile stages whose amino acid requirements are high. The requirements for essential amino acids are progressively reduced as animals grow older, and it is possible to meet the needs of adults with diets containing lower levels of animal protein and relatively higher levels of plant protein. Fish meal, poultry meal, feather meal, and blood meal are the animal protein sources most widely used in aquaculture diets.

There is also a vital need to seek effective ingredients that can either partially or totally replace fish meal and other ingredients as protein sources in aquafeeds. Algal products can be used to enhance the nutritional value of food and animal feed owing to their chemical composition (Dewi et al., 2014); they play a crucial role in aquaculture (Jamali and Ahmadifard, 2015).

The nutrient balance of feed ingredients influences feed utilization and growth of aquaculture species, and there is generous information on the nutrient content of feed ingredients produced by different industries worldwide. However, many requirements are, at best, only rough approximations of the optimum amounts of nutrients for practical diets to grow aquaculture species to harvestable size. Management, environmental factors, and size can have an effect on dietary nutrient levels for optimum performance. Nevertheless, nutrient requirement data that are available serve relatively well as a basis to formulate highly productive, economical diets for commercial aquaculture. In formulating a diet for a species where nutrient requirements are not known, the requirements for a related species whose nutrient requirements are known can be used. Generally, most variation of nutrients required among classes should be expected between warm- and coldwater species, fresh- and saltwater species, and finfishes and crustaceans.

It is essential to know the nutritional requirements, particularly for protein, lipid, and energy, for optimum growth of the species as well as in formulating a balanced diet. Improper protein and energy levels in feed increases production cost and deteriorates water quality. Insufficient energy in diets causes protein waste due to the increased proportion of dietary protein used for energy and the produced ammonia can reduce the water quality. Moreover, feed ingredients should deliver the necessary nutrients in amounts to meet the requirements of aquaculture species (Tacon, 1987). However, the amounts of total amino acids contained in feed ingredients are often much higher than the amounts that are digestible. Feed formulations based on digestible amino acids have been shown to increase body weight gain and feed intake and can improve body composition.

According to a study published by FAO (2003) protein is the