| Summary: | Finfish aquaculture is the fastest-growing food-production sector in the world. Nevertheless, intensive production faces increased disease outbreaks due to high stock densities and environmental effects. Currently, infectious diseases represent the main causes of losses in salmon aquaculture. To prevent this, antibiotics and vaccines have been frequently utilized as a treatment and control methods for infectious agents. However, restrictions on antibiotic use due to antibiotic-resistant strain outbreaks, as well as, the variable protection exerted by vaccines, has made the industry to explore additional treatments. Probiotics are an important non-toxic and non-polluting tool in aquaculture to improve fish growth, stress tolerance and non-specific defense. In finfish aquaculture, many probiotics have been tested, including lactic acid bacteria (LAB; Lactobacillus and Carnobacterium), Bacillus, and Pediococcus spp. The role of probiotics within the digestive tract in the two most important salmonids, Atlantic salmon and rainbow trout, has been widely studied, however the effect of probiotic supplementation on the growth, survival, immune response, and gut integrity of Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) raised under aquaculture conditions has not been widely studied. Chinook salmon is a native species of the Canadian Pacific coast with potential economic and environmental benefits for aquaculture. Additionally, Chinook salmon farming can play an important role in diversifying current Canadian aquaculture and help protecting the wild stocks. Some issues that keep to date Chinook salmon farming at a low scale are the risk of escapees diluting the genetic diversity of wild populations and the decrease of the flesh quality when they reach sexual maturation. Sterile triploid salmon offer a solution however, they have an a 10-30% higher disease mortality rate compared to diploid fish. This makes Chinook salmon an ideal candidate to utilize probiotics as an alternative to antibiotics and vaccines. The contents of ...
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