Agricultural wastes for brine shrimp Artemia production: a review

An increasing global population has meant aquaculture, one of the fastest growing food industry sectors, faces significant sustainability challenges as it tries to address the rising global protein demand. In many sectors, production is underpinned by fishmeal as dietary ingredient, but this is a finite resource with competing users from the poultry and livestock industries. Alternatively, some (planktonic) aquatic species, especially brine shrimp Artemia, can be produced using agricultural waste to provide food or biomass to support increasing aquaculture demand. This review investigates research and production of Artemia using agricultural waste. Various systems used for Artemia production in inoculated ponds are analysed and discussed to provide options for environmentally sustainable food systems that can be applied from either an artisanal level in developing countries with a considerable labour force, or in intensive systems in countries with large volumes of under-utilised resources, for example, sugar/alcohol-based waste and inland saline areas. Using agricultural waste, single cell protein production in a separate aerobic digester can be a simple, continuous food source for Artemia to enable daily biomass harvest. This could then be used as a fishmeal replacement or possibly for human consumption to promote a circular economy by remediating waste to produce protein, like a food production mine.