Fish Nutrition and Feed Technology (2+1)

Unit 10 - Methods of feed formulation and manufacturing

10.3.Methods of feed formulation
10.3.3.Quadratic programming
Nutrient requirements used in linear programming feed formulation are usually fixed for maximum rate of growth. This may not be the best decision from economic point of view. Nutrient constraints may be relaxed to bring down feed cost while still achieving acceptable lower growth.

Quadratic programming takes into account the growth response within a range of nutrient constraint. Therefore, good understandings of biological response functions from actual feeding trials are essential in the use of quadratic programming. For example, inclusion level of arginine could be reduced by 20% with only a 5% likely reduction of growth of Nile tilapia. Thus high cost towards arginine supplement can brought down by hardly loosing likely growth of 5% in the fish.