The giant freshwater prawn, Macrobrachium rosenbergii (De Man, 1879), is gaining popularity as a key aquaculture species; global production currently exceed 220,000 tonnes, however, industry expansion is limited by high operational costs, with the feed accounting for between 40 to 60% of these. Attention, therefore, has been devoted to increasing the inclusion of plant proteins into the formulation of aqua feeds as a consequence of the limited, unpredictable supply and increasing price of fishmeal. The concomitant introductions of anti-nutritional factors (ANFs), such as phytic acid (PA) with the plant protein fraction, however, are major impediments in the efforts toward the increased use of plant protein ingredients in aqua feeds. Phytic acid is an anti-nutrient that can curtail the development of this as PA has been reported to suppress growth impairing proper nutrient intake, diminishing the availability of minerals, and causing damage to the body tissues and organs which can result in mortality. Although the anti-nutritive effects of PA have been studied extensively in terrestrial agriculture farm species, as well as in a variety of fish species, there is almost no information regarding the effects of PA in crustaceans, including the freshwater prawn, M. rosenbergii.
The aims of this present thesis were, therefore, to gain a greater understanding of dietary PA and microbial phytase and their effect on growth performance, feed utilisation, nutrient utilisation and digestibility, mineral availability and whole body proximate composition in juvenile M. rosenbergii. Specifically, the first major experiment set out to investigate the effect of including increasing amounts of PA in the diets presented to M. rosenbergii on growth. The dose-response relationships between PA and growth performance, feed utilisation, nutrient digestibility and utilisation and whole proximate composition were investigated. Four replicate groups of M. rosenbergii with a mean initial carapace length of 6.03 ± 0.30 mm and mean initial weight of 0.29 ± 0.02 g were fed graded levels of PA for 140 days. The basal diet, to which different levels of PA were added to obtain 0.26 (control), 6.48, 11.28, 16.53, 21.45 and 26.16 g PA kg-1, contained fishmeal, soy protein concentrate, wheat meal and corn starch. The results indicated that growth performance, feed utilisation and survival did not differ significantly between the groups receiving the different inclusions of PA within their diets. The apparent protein, lipid and energy utilisations responded negatively, decreasing significantly (p