Vitamin Bullets. Microencapsulated Feeds to Fortify Shellfish and Tackle Human Nutrient Deficiencies

Abstract

Over two billion people worldwide are micronutrient deficient, with regionally specific deficiencies. Fortification of food with micronutrients has become an industry standard for enhancing public health. Bivalve shellfish (e.g., oysters, clams, and mussels) provide the most sustainable source of animal protein on the planet, and the market is rapidly growing-with production in China increasing 1,000-fold since 1980 to an annual 36 kg capita −1 consumption level. Bivalves are also unique in that micronutrients consumed at their end-life stage will be digested by humans, as humans consume the entire organism including the gut. We have developed a novel microencapsulated vehicle for delivering micronutrients to bivalves, tailored for optimal size, shape, buoyancy, and palatability, demonstrating the potential of fortified bivalves to tackle human nutrient deficiencies. Oysters fed vitamin A and D microcapsules at a 3% initial dosage for just 8 h had elevated tissue vitamin content. A serving of just two such bivalves provides enough vitamin A and D to meet human dietary RDAs. Scale-up of this technology and application to other bivalve species including clams and mussels could provide a low-cost and highly sustainable mechanism to contribute toward tackling nutrient deficiencies globally.

Microencapsulated diets using thraustochytrids and macroalgae side streams for nursery rearing of Mytilus galloprovincialis spat

“…Microencapsulated diets offer considerable potential for producing sustainable and cost‐effective balanced diets that can be tailored to particular species and developmental stages (Willer & Aldridge, 2020b). Further innovations in microencapsulation offer additional opportunities for enhancement of diets with key micronutrients, vitamins (Willer & Aldridge, 2020c), and therapeutics (Willer & Aldridge, 2020a).…”

Wild fish consumption can balance nutrient retention in farmed fish

“…FIFO has been used to assess sustainability of feed use 12 and to account for by-products generated from processing, highlighting socio-economic drivers of feed resources 23 . Our understanding of the proportion of essential dietary micronutrients present in wild fish and fed to farmed fish that are retained for human consumption is still limited 2 , 5 , 7 , 24 , 25 . Measuring the amount of nutrients in edible portions of wild fish that are converted to feed ingredients but are also directly consumed and marketed as seafood (hereon ECM feed fish), relative to the amount of nutrients in the salmon fillet produced, can provide insights into the nutritional performance of fish farming from a food system perspective.…”

Maximising sustainable nutrient production from coupled fisheries-aquaculture systems

“…New bivalve breeding technologies and innovations such as microencapsulated feeds can provide an efficient means to rear high quality bivalve seed [43]. Developing the value chain to include facilities which integrate mussel hatcheries, depuration, and processing could dramatically lower domestic production costs, and provide the opportunity to create added-value mussel foods [39], for example through nutritional fortification with vitamin D during depuration [44]. The development of offshore mussel farms, such as Offshore Shellfish (Devon, UK), can avoid conflicts with coastal activities and could be integrated with other green initiatives such as wind farms [25].…”