The farming of marine shrimp is a sector of great economic viability, mainly in the Northeast region of Brazil. However, feeding is responsible for the major cost in the farming of these crustaceans, so the food must be nutritiously efficient, since it is essential to the presence of vitamins which are vital substances to the functioning of the animal's organism where its lack frequently results in deficient growth and development. Retinol, -tocopherol, and ascorbic acid are vitamins that act in several metabolic processes, therefore they are indispensable in animal food due to their antioxidant effects that protect these animals against oxidative stress. The objective of this study was to evaluate the vitamin losses during the diet processing and in the storage period. Eight isoproteic diets were formulated with different levels of vitamin A, E and C that were processed with temperatures up to 70º C. After the production and 60 days of storage, the vitamins were analyzed and quantified in order to discover the losses during the processing and post-storage. It was observed that the vitamin A suffered loss of up to 99.56%, vitamin E had its maximum loss value of 93.5% and vitamin C with 70% of loss, during the processing. During the storage period the losses were lower. It can be concluded that the vitamins are extremely sensitive to the factors that occur during the production and food storage, causing considerable vitamin losses.
Animal feeding; vitamins; stability
