Replacement of Fish Meal with Fermented Soybean Meal in Fish Feed: A Review

Soybean meal is a source of vegetable protein to replace fish meal which is widely used because it has a high protein content (26.7 -65.5%), balanced amino acids and easy to find compared to other plants. Besides being high in protein, soybean meal also contains anti-nutrients which can inhibit growth, feed effectiveness, and lower nutrient utilization in fish. So it is necessary to process feed ingredients to remove anti-nutritional content. Fermentation can be a solution for utilizing soybean meal by reducing the anti-nutrient content and crude fiber to produce components that can be utilized properly, such as protein, β-glucan, vitamins, mannan oligosaccharides, organic acids, and antibiotics. The type of fermented soybean meal that is widely used is Bacillus spp., Aspergillus spp., Lactobacillus spp., and yeast. The purpose of this literature review study was to determine the effect of replacing fish meal with fermented soybean meal in fish feed. Several types of fish that have been fed using fermented soybean meal include seabasses, green snapper, mud grouper, rainbow trout, pomfret star, tilapia, and turbot. Fermentation of soybean meal to fish can increase growth rate, gut morphology, gut microecology, feed digestibility, feed preferences, fish innate immunity and produce antimicrobial peptides. Soybean meal fermentation as a substitute for fish meal has been shown to have a good effect on fish so that it can continue to be developed to increase the utilization of soybean meal.