The United States Soybean Export Council (USSEC) has worked for over 35 years with the aquaculture industry worldwide to promote a profitable, responsible, feed-based aquaculture industry while specifically promoting the use of United States soy products in aquaculture feeds. One of the primary targets for USSEC are aquaculture feedmills, as this is where soy enters aquaculture production value chain. USSEC identified a critical weakness in the aquaculture industry that generally does not exist in the terrestrial livestock industry, namely the availability of a standardized feed formulation database. Since 2014 USSEC has partnered with others in the aquaculture nutrition space to create the first known standardized aquaculture feed formulation database, now known as the International Aquaculture Feed Formulation Database (IAFFD).
Now entering v7.0, the IAFFD contains almost 700 feed ingredients in the Feed Ingredient Composition (sub) Database (FICD), and the Aquaculture Species Nutritional Specifications (ASNS) (sub) database has information on 31 species at different age groups (typically six for fish and four for crustaceans). This database has been made freely available to the public to help improve aquaculture feed formulation approaches and is available at www.IAFFD.com. It was envisioned that this database would be used for training purposes, and as a reference, but increasingly we are seeing the database being adopted, in full or in part, as an actual database by commercial industry
There are many novel characteristics to the IAFFD, but one of importance is that an attempt is being made to link target nutrient levels in the ASNS to specific production systems. Similar to how different species and different life stages may require different nutrient levels, it is anticipated that different production systems, from extensive to highly intensive (such as Recirculating Aquaculture systems, or RAS) may require different nutrient targets for optimal performance. As this approach is developed it will be important to get input from industry for what important parameters need to be considered to allow more targeted nutrient levels and what additional ingredient information may be needed. For example, in RAS it may be important to target faster growth and a different energy/protein level due to the cost of the production system and desired body conformation, and to add information on ingredients that quantifies their impact on water quality.