Skip to main content

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Sustain. Food Syst.

Sec. Aquatic Foods

Volume 9 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fsufs.2025.1568203

Biochemical characterization and antioxidant status of mysid Mesopodopsis slabberi: potential use as natural resource to aquaculture

Provisionally accepted
  • Andalusian Institute of Agricultural and Fisheries Research and Training (IFAPA)-Centro El Toruño, El Puerto de Santa María, Spain

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Mysids have a great potential as the new high nutritional, sustainable and functional natural resources aquaculture require globally. Despite being an excellent source of proteins and essential fatty acids, their potential in aquaculture has barely been evaluated. We have characterized the nutritional value of Mesopodopsis slabberi in the Guadalquivir estuary, where constitutes a key prey for fish juveniles. Seasonal and ontogenic biochemical composition variation was studied. M. slabberi shows high protein per dry mass (60%) with a slight a significant (p<0.05) decline in summer. Glutamic +glutamine, lysine and aspartic +asparagine were the dominant aminoacids, with relatively high levels of leucine, alanine, glycine, methionine, phenylalanine and tryptophane, all of great relevance for aquaculture feeds. Total lipids content is high in M. slabberi, representing PUFAs 44.15 ± 1.12 % of the total fatty acids. The highest concentrations of EPA and DHA fatty acids were found in spring. Most important the ratio DHA/EPA was high and similar in all season with an average value of 0.83 ± 0.03. DHA/AA and EPA/AA ratio were 4.92 ± 0.38 and 6.10 ± 0.48 respectively. Highest n3/n6 ratio (p<0.05) were detected in spring 7.83 ± 0.77. M. slabberi show an adequate antioxidant balance with TAC/LP ratio greater than 90 in spring and summer reaching the highest levels (132) in autumn. In Guadalquivir estuary, M. slabberi presents high zinc and selenium levels. Our results demonstrate how M. slabberi has high nutritional profile and potential to be used as a valuable functional ingredient in aquaculture, both inert and as a living resource. More research in relation to culture technology and functional assess is necessary to open new ways to reach aquaculture long-term sustainability.

    Keywords: Biochemical composition, Mysid, Mesopodopsis slabberi, Fatty Acids, Antioxidant status, Aquaculture

    Received: 29 Jan 2025; Accepted: 28 Mar 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Vilas-Fernández, Fernandez-Diaz and Cardenas. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: César Vilas-Fernández, Andalusian Institute of Agricultural and Fisheries Research and Training (IFAPA)-Centro El Toruño, El Puerto de Santa María, Spain

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

    Research integrity at Frontiers

    Man ultramarathon runner in the mountains he trains at sunset

    95% of researchers rate our articles as excellent or good

    Learn more about the work of our research integrity team to safeguard the quality of each article we publish.


    Find out more