Response of blue shrimp Litopenaeus stylirostris (Pérez-Farfante & Kensley, 1997) to dietary cadaverine supplementation

Recent studies on salmon and shrimp have shown that reduced feed intake and growth caused by the consumption of low‐quality fish meals, manufactured from spoiled fish, were not due to the presence of biogenic amines. Moreover, an improvement in weight gain was seen in blue shrimp fed a diet supplemented with cadaverine plus histamine. It was not clear, however, if this effect was due to the consumption of histamine or cadaverine. The objective of the current experiment was to investigate the effect of dietary cadaverine supplementation on growth parameters and various amine concentrations in tissues of the blue shrimp Litopenaeus stylirostris. Six experimental diets were supplemented with cadaverine at 0, 500, 1100, 2300, 3500 and 4600 mg kg^?1 and tested in a feeding trial lasting 28 days. Feed consumption, feed conversion ratio, survival and weight gain were not affected by the concentration of dietary cadaverine. The dietary supplementation of cadaverine, however, resulted in a linear increase in cadaverine concentration in shrimp tissues, especially in the hepatopancreas. It was concluded that dietary cadaverine does not have any effect on growth and feed intake of shrimp. Growth promotion, as reported previously in shrimp fed a diet supplemented with histamine plus cadaverine, was probably due to histamine or a combined effect of histamine plus cadaverine but not due to dietary cadaverine alone. It seems that shrimp have a limited ability to metabolize cadaverine, which then accumulates intact in shrimp tissues.