Potential of probiotics and postbiotics in aquaculture: Connecting current research gaps and future perspectives

Abstract

With the increasing demand for aquatic foods, the aquaculture industry is facing huge challenges that place constraints on the sustainability and efficacy of this growing industry, which include disease outbreaks, antibiotic resistance , and environmental degradation. Antibiotics have long been used in the aquaculture industry, where they are known to be highly effective in treating and preventing diseases. However, growing concern over antibiotic resistance has led researchers to turn to probiotics and postbiotics as appropriate alternatives with positive effects on growth performance, resistance to diseases, and overall well-being in aquatic animals. These include Lactobacillus spp ., Bacillus spp ., and Saccharomyces cerevisiae , which work through mechanisms including competitive exclusion, modulation of the immune response, and production of antimicrobial agents. These features can include cell-free supernatants, short-chain fatty acids, and bacteriocins , all of which confer similar benefits without those of living microbes, such as stability in different environments and lower risk of transferring antibiotic resistance genes. While promising, large knowledge gaps exist, such as the absence of standardized protocols, limited mechanistic understanding of activities, scarce species-specific response data, and long-term ecological effects. Therefore, the advancement of omics technologies, species-specific studies, and ecological risk assessment plays an important role in enhancing the efficiency of these systems. In this review, we summarized recent data, determined research gaps, and emphasized the role of probiotics and postbiotics for sustainable aquaculture, as well as stressing the necessity of research establishing a correlation between laboratory use and application in the field.

Topics & Concepts