**9. Conclusion**

Good water stable pellets are a major concern for the aquaculture industry. Binder agents have been widely employed to improve the stability of aquatic animal feed. Binders are believed to prevent or at least reduce major nutrient loss and feed softness which is inevitable when pellets stay in water for long periods of time. Preventing or reducing such an inconvenient would have beneficial consequences on the aquaculture industry. Binder prices may significantly affect the cost of the diet, therefore the utilization of natural substances, biodegradable and renewable may be advantageous from an environmental and economical point of view. Although there is not such a thing as the best binding agent, the research in this field is actively ongoing, since different species and even the same species during different phases of the life cycle have different feeding behaviours and nutritional needs. However, despite progress in recent years, knowledge of microbound diets and their impact on digestive physiology and growth performances of reared aquatic species is still not sufficient in light of the industry's needs and thus further research is required.

#### **10. References**

24 Aquaculture

*Penaeus monodon* (Fang & Lee, 1992), and *Litopenaeus vannamei* (Brito et al., 2000), may be related to the low level of carbohydrate in the diet (Le Vay et al., 1993; Rodriguez et al., 1994; Kumlu & Jones, 1995; Lemos & Rodriguez, 1998). Protease, amylase and cellulase activities have been found to be positively correlated with dietary protein levels (Pavasovic et al., 2007b), and negatively correlated with high cellulose levels (Pavasovic et al., 2006). In contrast, in the white shrimp *Penaeus vannamei* dietary protein level did not influence total protease activity, although modulation of trypsin- and chymotrypsin-like activities has been documented (Muhlia-Almazan et al., 2003). Moreover, no significant difference was observed in protease activity of *Litopenaeus vannamei* (Rivas-Vega et al., 2006) and *Scylla serrata* subjected to different dietary treatments (Pavasovic et al., 2004). In *Cherax quadricarinatus* the digestive enzyme secretion is modified by the diet composition, such as the presence of animal- or plant-derived ingredients (Lopez-Lopez et al., 2005; Pavasovic et al., 2007a). In the mollusk *Babylonia areolate* a positive correlation between dietary lipid level and lipase activity has been reported (Zhou et al., 2007). Among teleosts, proteolytic activity has been found unresponsive to the protein content of the diet in *Pseudoplatystoma corruscans*  (Lundstedt et al., 2004) and in early weaned sea bass (*Dicentrarchus labrax*) larvae (Cahu & Zambonino-Infante, 1994), but not in *Colossoma macropomum,* where digestive protease increased along with dietary protein content (De Almeida et al., 2006). On the other hand, alkaline protease activity was higher in *Dentex dentex* fed a diet with less protein and more carbohydrates (Perez-Jimenez et al., 2009). Amylase activity was higher in *Pseudoplatystoma corruscans* fed diets containing 13-25% of starch and similarly, it could be adjusted through the starch level of the diet in *Colossoma macropomum* (De Almeida et al., 2006) and *Dentex dentex* (Perez-Jimenez et al., 2009). A positive correlation has been observed between lipase and dietary lipid levels in *Colossoma macropomum* (De Almeida et al., 2006) and *Lateolabrax japonicus* (Luo et al., 2010). In any case the emerging picture in teleosts is one of wide complexity and variability due to the different of habitats and life histories of such

Virtually no studies have been carried out with the main purpose of investigating the effect of feed binders on digestive enzyme activity. The effect of different binders on digestive enzymes profile has been studied by us in *Cherax albidus* (Volpe et al., submitted). In an attempt to understand if the presence of binders influenced the digestive enzymatic profile we undertook a screening of carbohydratases, lipases and proteases along the digestive tract of juvenile *Cherax albidus* under both natural diet (Coccia et al., 2011) and different experimental diets based on pellets containing different binders but the same proximate composition. We found that digestive enzyme activities did not statistically show significant differences in the digestive tract except for amylase that was significantly higher in the intestine compared to the gastric juice and hepatopancreas of animals fed pectin containing

Good water stable pellets are a major concern for the aquaculture industry. Binder agents have been widely employed to improve the stability of aquatic animal feed. Binders are believed to prevent or at least reduce major nutrient loss and feed softness which is inevitable when pellets stay in water for long periods of time. Preventing or reducing such an inconvenient would have beneficial consequences on the aquaculture industry. Binder prices may significantly affect the cost of the diet, therefore the utilization of natural

vertebrates.

pellets for 12 weeks.

**9. Conclusion** 


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