Bacteriophage applications in aquaculture

Aquaculture has grown tremendously due to the big demand for its products. However, diseases affecting aquaculture and economic losses are worldwide problems and it needs low cost, sustainable, highly efficient, specific and eco-friendly therapeutants. Due to the rising up antibiotic resistant-microorganism, bacteriophage therapy has reinvigorated to replace antibiotics in agriculture, medicine, food safety and the environment. Likewise, it also holds great promise to avoid, control and treat bacteria in aquaculture to decrease the mortality level of different aquatic animal diseases. The isolation and characterization of new phages and phage application therapy to eliminate bacterial fish and shellfish pathogens such as Vibrio, Aeromonas, Pseudomonas, Lactococcus, Yersinia, Flavobacterium, and Streptococcus was gradually reported in aquaculture literature. The present review summarizes large-scale reports in vitro or in vivo use of aquaphage studies and applications in fish diseases from the 1980s to 2022 and future directions.