Do probiotics enhance economic performance in prawn farming?

Prawn farming faces significant challenges because of bacterial infections, inferior feed quality, and poor water quality, which reduce productivity and efficiency. Probiotics offer environmentally friendly solutions for enhancing productivity, efficiency, and sustainability. Consequently, this study examines whether the technical efficiency of prawn farmers differs between probiotic users and non-users. Data from 318 Bangladeshi farms were analyzed using meta-frontier Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to assess technical efficiency and Tobit regression to identify the factors influencing it. The results indicated that probiotic users were significantly more efficient, with an average technical efficiency score of 0.78, whereas non-users scored 0.64. Furthermore, the Tobit regression model showed that probiotics (applied to feed supplementation, disease control, and water/soil improvement) and socioeconomic factors (training and supplementary household income) significantly improved technical efficiency. These findings highlight probiotics as a sustainable alternative to other additives, such as antibiotics, to improve productivity and resilience in prawn farming.