A B S T R A C T The cost of fish feed is a major constraint to fish farming in Sub-Sahara Africa. In the aquaculture value chain, feed is a determining factor and accounts for 60-75% of the total cost of fish production in many African countries. Therefore, 284 actors from all eight agro-ecological areas of Benin were interviewed and 28 local feed ingredients were collected as alternative ingredients for new fish feed formulations for, predominantly, Clarias gariepinus and Tilapia niloticus.

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... ee categories of feeds were used, namely imported (84% of farmers), locally produced to complement imported feeds (76%) and natural ingredients (81%). The main imported feeds were from the Netherlands (59% of farmers), Ghana (52%) and France (15%). Natural ingredients were mostly Moringa leaves (52%), cassava leaves (26%) and maggots (43%). The best available ingredients were cereal bran, soybean meal, cottonseed meal, cassava chips, palm kernel cake, soybean and maize. Regarding proteins, the most promising ingredients were trash fish (680 g/kg), poultry viscera (590 g/kg), soybean meal (450 g/kg) and cottonseed meal (410 g/kg). Oyster shell had the highest ash content (960 g/kg), followed by whole garden snail meal (700 g/kg). The highest carbohydrate contents were for tapioca (890 g/kg), lafun (880 g/kg) and cassava chips (810 g/kg). Overall, this study revealed a diversity of local feed ingredients available in Benin to formulate fish feeds with adequate nutritional composition to enable efficient fish farming.