Deng lab specializes in aquaculture nutrition research
Research in this lab integrates both traditional feeding trials and cutting edge techniques to study:
- Nutrient Requirements: Determining the nutritional requirements of fish at different life stages and in different types of culture systems. Current research focuses include, but are not limited to tilapia, yellow perch, walleye, and lake sturgeon. Our fish are cultured in aquaponic, flow-through, and recirculating systems.
- Alternative Ingredients: Investigating substitutes for fish meal and fish oil in aquatic feed production. Some potential ingredients evaluated include but are not limited to, byproducts and co-products from biofuels, agriculture, fisheries, and food processing industries. Currently we are exploring the applications of byproducts of food processing, microalgae, bile acid, and black soldier flies.
- Stress Response: Studying the possible impacts of the nutritional status of the fish and their microbiome characterization on the tolerance of those fish to environmental stressors. Our approaches integrate biomarkers from gene expression and biochemical responses over the whole organism. We seek to understand how nutrition effects the mechanisms used by different species of fish to handle diverse environmental stressors.
Our goal is to develop optimal feed and feeding management to support the sustainability of the aquaculture and fisheries industry.