Central Institute of Brackishwater Aquaculture (CIBA) is one of the research institutes under Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), New Delhi to serve as the nodal agency for catering to the needs of the brackishwater aquaculture research in India. The institute is headquartered at Santhome High Road, Raja Annamalai Puram, Chennai with a research centre at Kakdwip in West Bengal and an experimental field station at Muttukadu, roughly 30 km to the south of Chennai. The institute works under the Ministry of Agriculture, India..
The study was aimed to evaluate the binding efficacy of seaweed, Gracilaria tenuistipitata meal in the diet of Penaeus vannamei, and also to assess its impact on growth performance, feed utilization, and immunity. Five experimental diets were formulated: a standard shrimp feed (36 % crude protein, 5.5 % crude fat) without seaweed meal or synthetic binder (negative control), another test diet containing 0 % seaweed meal with polymethylolcarbamide as the synthetic binder (positive control), and additional three diets with 2 %, 4 %, and 6 % seaweed meal, respectively. The results revealed that inclusion of seaweed meal at 4 % and 6 % in the shrimp diet could be an ideal natural source of binder. Further, a 60-days feeding trial was conducted in shrimp, P. vannamei using the same set of experimental diets. Results showed that shrimp fed 4 % and 6 % seaweed meal had comparable growth to the positive control. Diets with 4 % and 6 % seaweed meal improved FCR over the standard test diet. In addition, the 4 % and 6 % treatment groups exhibited significantly higher total hemocyte and large granular cells than the other diet treatments. Phenoloxidase (PO) activity was significantly (P < 0.05) higher in the 6 % group compared to the other groups. Post fed body composition of experimental shrimp indicated that the highest crude protein content in shrimp fed with 6 % seaweed diet. The results of the study demonstrated that incorporating G. tenuistipitata meal at a 4-6 % dietary level can significantly improve the physical quality of the feed and non-specific immunity of P. vannamei.
Fungal enzootics and epizootics cause significant biological loss in fisheries and aquaculture necessitating and sometimes forcing non-legal use of veterinary medicinal products sans essential scientific data on drug efficacy, kinetics, residue levels, etc. The present study determines the pharmacokinetics, bioavailability and tissue depletion of clotrimazole (CTZ), one of the oldest and most effective azoles against a major fungal pathogen Saprolegnia parasitica, following enteral and parenteral administrations in widely consumed catfish Pangasianodon hypophthalmus. The drug residues in fish tissues at different time points were quantified by LC-MS/MS. The results showed very slow kinetics including absorption/distribution, and elimination of CTZ, especially after parenteral administration. Following bolus oral administration, the drug underwent first pass with negligible clearance from liver, and very high residence time in all the tissues. However, high AUC/MIC ratio, Cmax> MIC and prolong
Penaeid shrimp are among the most commercially important aquaculture species globally, yet no dedicated integrated functional annotation and enrichment analysis platform currently for penaeid shrimp. Researchers working with shrimp transcriptomic data currently rely on generic enrichment tools built around model organisms that provide limited or no coverage for most penaeid species. In this context, current study aims to develop annotation and enrichment analysis platform for commercially important shrimp species. ShEnrich was developed using a multi-tiered annotation pipeline combining BLASTP searches against the NCBI non-redundant database, InterProScan domain prediction, and eggNOG-mapper orthology assignments. Cross-species ortholog clustering was performed using OrthoMCL across five commercially farmed penaeid species. GMT libraries for each species were constructed for KEGG and GO enrichment analysis, implemented using the clusterProfiler R package. The platform was built on a MySQL 8.0 relational database with a PHP 8.1 backend and an integrated JBrowse2 genome browser. The database integrates 61,287 annotated proteins representing 34,169 genes, with 178,595 gene-pathway associations across 442 KEGG pathways and 138,077 proteins mapped to 12,897 GO terms across five species: Penaeus vannamei, Penaeus monodon, Penaeus indicus, Penaeus chinensis, and Penaeus japonicus. Cross-species comparative genomics is supported through 18,031 ortholog groups identified using OrthoMCL. The web platform provides KEGG and GO enrichment analysis, protein annotation search, ortholog browsing, and genome visualization. ShEnrich is freely available at https://bioinfo.ciba.res.in/shenrich/. ShEnrich provides the first dedicated functional annotation and enrichment analysis resource for penaeid shrimp, filling a gap that has limited biological interpretation of transcriptomic data in this economically important group. The platform supports functional analysis of gene expression studies across disease, stress, and environmental conditions in commercially farmed shrimp species.
The global shrimp aquaculture industry is highly vulnerable to water quality fluctuations, disease outbreaks and the inefficiencies of manual monitoring. To address these challenges, this paper presents a unified Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT) enabled framework that integrates real-time sensing, predictive analytics and automated pH sensor calibration for precision aquaculture management. A custom-designed aqua buoy system continuously measures the critical parameters including pH, Dissolved Oxygen (DO) and Oxidation Reduction Potential (ORP) using a distributed IoT sensor network with cloud connectivity. A responsive web dashboard and mobile application deliver real-time visualization, farmer advisories and automated alert notifications, facilitating timely interventions. Machine learning models are employed in the proposed model for disease classification and intelligent decision-making: Random Forest achieves 98.35% accuracy in disease prediction, while Random Forest regression provides highly reliable pH voltage prediction by minimizing manual calibration requirements. Furthermore, Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) networks are utilized for time-series forecasting, achieving up to 94% accuracy in predicting pH, DO and ORP trends, thereby enabling early corrective actions. The proposed method enhances monitoring efficiency, reduces shrimp mortality risk and supports environmentally sustainable farming practices. This integrated approach demonstrates the potential of combining IoT, disease classification & prediction and automated calibration techniques to transform aquaculture into a data-driven, precision-managed and resource-efficient industry.
The present study evaluated the effects of dietary supplementation with single- and multi-strain autochthonous lactic acid probiotics on the growth performance, gut histomorphology, and gut microbiome of juvenile Penaeus vannamei. Shrimp were fed probiotic-supplemented or control diets for 60 days. Dietary supplementation with Pediococcus pentosaceus (10⁹ CFU g⁻¹) and Lactiplantibacillus plantarum (10⁹ CFU g⁻¹) significantly (P < 0.05) improved growth performance compared with the control. Additionally, MSP11, MSP9, and PP11 significantly (P < 0.05) enhanced localized gut histology, including villi length, crypt depth, and muscularis mucosae thickness, respectively. Gut microbiome analysis showed treatment-specific shifts in bacterial community composition, with significantly (P < 0.05) increased microbial diversity (alpha diversity) in shrimp receiving the high-dose multi-strain probiotic. Probiotic supplementation also enriched beneficial bacterial taxa, including members of the families Oxalobacteraceae, Flavobacteriaceae, and Bacillaceae, while promoting the establishment of potentially beneficial genera such as Ralstonia and Paracoccus. Overall, dietary supplementation with autochthonous lactic acid probiotics, administered individually or as a multi-strain consortium, improved growth, enhanced gut morphology, and favorably modulated the gut microbiome of P. vannamei, highlighting their potential as sustainable functional feed additives in shrimp aquaculture.
