Silk worm pupal meal: A alternative protein source in aqua feed

In feed fishmeal is the major ingredient, used as protein source because of its nutritional profile. In progression of time fish meal cost has raised enormously due to overfishing, environmental changes, limitation of its raw material supply and it’s over usage in feeds of all terrestrial and aquatic meat producing animals, led to increase in feed and production cost. In the search of reducing the feed cost, research on usage of insect meals in animal diets as fish meal replacers either partially or completely has become the novel strategies. Among the different insect meals, silkworm pupal meal is one which is effective and efficient fish meal replacer. It can be used in aquatic animal feeds as pupal meal, deoiled silkworm pupal meal, fermented pupal meal etc., to improve the growth performance and also has a great influence on animal body composition as well as digestive enzyme activity. India is the 2nd largest producer of silk and produces huge amount of silkworm pupae wastes dumped into environment which can be used as protein source in feed. It has a good nutritional profile which is likely near and equal to fish meal, it consists of 50 -80% of crude protein on dry matter, rich in essential amino acid profile and lipid content ranges from 20-40% in freshly spent pupa and less than 10% in defatted pupa. The present review mainly targets on the impact of the silkworm pupal meal in aquatic animal when administered through diets.