Meta-analysis of dietary supplementation effect of turmeric and curcumin on growth performance in fish

Plant-based additives are currently used in aquaculture for their various beneficial properties. Curcumin and turmeric are usually applied for their interesting results on growth performance of fish. In this paper, the effect of dietary inclusion of curcumin and turmeric powder on growth performance in fish was studied. Twenty data sets from 5 studies and 29 data sets from 8 publications were respectively computed for curcumin and turmeric in this analysis. Specific growth rate (SGR) was the quantitative criteria recorded for each data set. After, a brief systemic summary of each study, the quantitative analysis was performed. Results showed a significant increase in pooled standard mean difference (SMD) for both fixed and random model in curcumin and turmeric. Although fish species were categorized into family (subcategory), high heterogeneity (>96%) was found in all random and fixed model analysis. Contrary to turmeric, higher curcumin inclusion results in lower specific growth rate. The higher effect sizes observed when fed curcumin at lower inclusion levels suggests that feeding low levels of phytochemicals might be beneficial and its content in turmeric should be analysed for quite homogeneous feed. This study contributes to the analysis of overall growth performance properties of turmeric and curcumin incorporation in fish diet, irrespective to their strong antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activities.