Muscle amino acid profile of Macrobrachium tenellum and chemical score of used protein in its feeding

Abstract

Freshwater prawns Macrobrachium tenellum were used to determine the content of amino acids (aa) of the muscle, and the chemical score of the main ingredients used in feeds for the species was determined. The separation and identification of aa is carried out by high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) with fluorescence detection. The calculation of chemical score was obtained by dividing the value of essential aa between aa of the reference protein. The most abundant aa in muscle were glutamic acid (16.14%), lysine (9.60%) and aspartic acid (9.06%) and the lowest were methionine (2.88%), histidine (2.52%) and tryptophan (0.47%). The first limiting amino acid for fishmeal was threonine and histidine for squid meal, and, as a second limiting aa, arginine and threonine respectively. In wheat flour, first and second limiting amino acids were lysine and threonine and, in soybean meal, methionine and lysine respectively. For feed formulation for M. tenellum intends to use a combination of plant and animal proteins that approximates the amino acid profile of the species.