Plant‐based diets fed to juvenile meagre Argyrosomus regius with low methionine and taurine supplementation led to an overall reduction in fish performance and to an increase in muscle fibre recruitment

Methionine and taurine are amino acids (AA) that are usually deficient when fish meal is replaced by plant proteins. In this study, three diets were tested in juvenile meagre (initial weight: 13.4 g) for 8 weeks. The D1 diet had 0.2% methionine and 1% taurine supplementation; the D2 and D3 diets had 0.6% methionine and 1% and 2% taurine supplementation, respectively. The results showed that meagre fed the D1 diet had lower specific growth rate (2.2 to 2.5), lower feed efficiency (0.9 to 1.2) and higher food conversion rate (FCR, 1.1 to 0.8) as well as a lower activity of the alanine aminotransferase (ALAT) enzyme. Furthermore, a higher recruitment of muscle fibres (46% compared to 36%) as well as a higher fibre density was observed (1019 compared to 870 fibres mm–2). This study shows that meagre requires a sufficient quantity of methionine in plant‐based diets to avoid a reduction in fish performance. Furthermore, taurine supplementation in the D1 diet was not able to mitigate the effects of methionine deficiency. A higher taurine supplementation did not improve meagre performance.