Recent advances and future directions in practical diet formulation and adoption in tropical Palinurid lobster aquaculture

The spiny lobsters Panulirus ornatus and Panulirus homarus are important developing tropical aquaculture species, with high demand and limited supply. The established industry in Vietnam relies on wild-caught mixed seafood bycatch as feed, a practice linked to water quality degradation and potentially disease proliferation in lobster aquaculture, necessitating formulated feed development. The emerging Indonesian and Australian industries lack the crustacean and mollusc component of the seafood bycatch used in Vietnam, increasing the need for manufactured feeds. The development of such feeds is reliant on knowledge of nutrient requirements, ingredient quality, physical feed requirements, and the link between feeding behaviour and feeding methods. This review will elaborate on the development of these knowledge areas to date and outline the two main reference diet recipes that are available as the basis for future research. Research to date has focused on developing a feed recipe that will be consumed and supports adequate growth rather than steering commercial least-cost formulation practices. Future research is clearly needed to inform formulation, but equally an understanding of the disparate emerging lobster farming industries and their drivers for the adoption of formulated feeds is required to ensure that such research is applied. This will require engagement throughout the supply chain to ensure that research is implementable and to address farmer perception toward formulated feeds. Technical aspects of feed manufacture and scale-up of feed developments will be critical to the adoption of research results, while validation through semi-commercial benchmarks and demonstration farm models are expected to increase commercial uptake of developed feeds.