Kwasi Adu A. Obirikorang ^1* Kwamena Quagrainie ² Jemimah E. Kassah ³ Mathis Von Ahnen ⁴

• ¹ Department of Fisheries and Watershed Management, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana, Kumasi, Ghana
• ² Department of Agricultural Economics, College of Agriculture, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, United States
• ³ Department of Biology Education, University of Education, Winneba, Ghana
• ⁴ DTU Aqua, Section for Aquaculture, The North Sea Research Centre, Technical University of Denmark, Hirtshals, Denmark

Food security has been persistently recognised in global discourse as one of the world's main challenges. Despite some progress towards ensuring access to safe, nutritious, and sufficient food for all people year-round (SDG Target 2.1) or eradicating all forms of malnutrition (SDG Target 2.2), FAO et al. (2024) estimated that between 713 to 757 million individuals (8.9 to 9.4 percent of the worldwide population) experienced undernourishment in 2023. Based on the mid-range figure of 733 million, about 152 million additional people may have faced hunger in 2023 compared to 2019. With outputs from capture fisheries stagnating over the past few decades, aquaculture holds the potential to play crucial roles in achieving food security (FAO, 2020). Global demands for fish are expected to increase in future decades to meet the needs and preferences of a growing human population (Jennings et al., 2016). With global populations projected to increase to over 9.7 billion by 2050 (United Nations, 2024), seafood in general and fish in particular will continue to play an important role in providing nutrition and food security globally, especially in developing countries (Cojocaru et al., 2022;Bjørndal et al., 2024). Two separate but interconnected sectors contribute to global fish supply: capture or wild-caught fisheries and aquaculture or farmed fish. In fact, as capture fisheries have levelled off, continued increases in production from aquaculture will be required in order to maintain or increase per capita fish consumption (FAO, 2020). According to the FAO (2022), aquaculture has for several decades, been the fastest growing animal production sector in the world, contributing to 49% of total aquatic production (FAO, 2022). This rate of growth and the sector's contribution to global food security, however, appear to be much lesser than estimated when seaweeds (algal autotrophs) are excluded from the production statistics and comparisons to terrestrial livestock productions are made based on only edible yields (Edwards et al., 2019). This, notwithstanding, the sector still holds the potential to make important contributions to sustainable food futures although its rapid expansion has consequences relating to environmental sustainability. Additionally, the faces challenges relating to the high 40 cost of aquafeeds for finfish shellfish, post-harvest losses, and pathogen-induced mortalities. 41 42The article submissions to this research topic make contributions to solving some of the problems the 43 aquaculture sector faces through perspectives, reviews, and original research focusing on various 44 aspects of aquaculture, including sustainable production (Chen et al., 2023;Shen et al., 2023;Mizuta 45 et al., 2024;N'Souvi et al., 2024) To build resilience and sustain production in the face of climate change and environmental degradation, 90 aquaculture producers must adapt to short-term available options such as shading ponds and aeration 91 or make long-term adjustments to production practices, including diversifying production systems and 92 areas (Maulu et al., 2021). By expanding the areas available for aquaculture production, the industry 93 can increase its production capacity to meet the rising human demands for fish and other aquatic 94 products. Aquaculture production in inland saline environments, also known as "desert aquaculture" 95 in some jurisdictions, offers the potential to increase production of euryhaline and marine species. 96While commercial aquaculture production using saline groundwater is well-developed in countries 97 such as the USA, Israel, India, and Australia (Allan et al., 2009), it remains underdeveloped in some 98 developing countries such as Pakistan (Rossignoli et al., 2024)