Recent advances in the potential and multifaceted role of probiotics in the development of sustainable aquaculture: Its current form and future perspectives

Aquaculture is the rapidly expanding global food producing industry with abundant resources and enormous potential in which fisheries play a crucial socio-economic role. Though, aquatic organisms are more vulnerable to environmental stresses and infections as well as there is an increasing demand for the production of livelihood and food for the expanding global population, which epitomize serious challenges. An attributing factor to these risks is the overuse of synthetic drugs and antibiotics, which negatively affect the aquatic environment. Surprisingly, use of probiotics as a natural alternative have shown enormous potentiality such as improved feed utilization, growth, disease resistance, immunomodulation, water quality, stress tolerance, modulation of gut microbiota, antioxidant defense and helps to provide a healthy microbial composition in aquatic ecosystems, that eventually leads to green and sustainable development of aquaculture. Probiotics along with prebiotics, the synbiotics, have also definite role to play, but their mechanism of action is still under scrutiny. Eventually, the concepts of paraprobiotics and postbiotics came into existence as they are safe from viable cells and utilized in aquatic organisms, but their use is in its infancy compared to higher vertebrates and required further insight on their precious efficacy as well as functional utility in aquaculture. This article summarizes the recent advances on the effectiveness of the probiotics as functional foods in supporting the comprehensive performance of the aquatic organisms, their possible mode of action as well as concentrated the existing information and cognition for subsequent investigation and expansion of the use of probiotic in the sustainable aquacultural development. • This article summarizes the recent advances on the effectiveness of the probiotics as functional foods in supporting the overall performance of the aquatic organisms, their possible mode of action. • This article concentrated the existing information and knowledge for subsequent investigation and expansion of the probiotic utilization in the development of sustainable aquaculture. • Probiotics alone or synbiotics, and/or paraprobiotics, postbiotics, successful commercialization can be potentially utilized for aquacultural production to convey the global food production which correlates the increasing global population.