Alternative medications in shrimp health management for improved production

Fisheries play an important role in the world economy, and it contributes to the nations’ income, exports, food, nutritional security, and employment opportunities. In recent years, the capture fisheries decline due to over exploitation and illegal fishing. Aquaculture is one of the lucrative foods producing industries due to its delicious taste and high-income generation in the international market; thus, aquaculture production has increased lately with various culturing methods of culture practices. Unfortunately, in the past two decades, the aquaculture industry faces serious infectious disease problems, and it affects the production level. The traditional practices are also not effective and create so many environmental hazards for disease control. Considering the potential threat and environmental issues, it should be focused on developing alternative applications for the solution of the problems. The alternative practices have versatile characteristics like safety, efficiency, and affordability and are highly recommended in aquaculture practices to achieve higher production. In the present review, we have discussed the alternative approaches for shrimp health management for improving food production, including antimicrobial and non-specific immune-stimulating herbal and algal compounds; in silico approach for designing suitable antimicrobial drugs; antimicrobial biosurfactants from microbial sources; pre and probiotics; different generation of vaccines and its production in different expression system; chicken edible antibody production and its influences in shrimp aquaculture system; Specific Pathogen Free (SPF) shrimp; RNA interference (RNAi); Phage Therapy and Gene editing technology (CRISPR). The above-said approaches help to improve the aquatic cultivable shrimps’ health leading to improve food production.