In aquatic animal feed preparation, stabilizing feed pellets and
ensuring minimum nutrient leaching and disintegration appears to
be crucial. This holds true especially for crayfish culture, due to the
peculiar feeding behavior of such crustaceans, being slow feeders
with a characteristic tendency to manipulate food using mouth
appendages before ingestion (Holdich, 2002). Much interest has
been devoted to the manufacturing of pellets for crayfish farming
in order to optimize feed intake and reduce wastage. Numerous natural
binders have been employed to manufacture firm pellets with the
purpose of increasing their water stability with a concomitant decrease
in nutrient loss. Polysaccharides, such as starch, cellulose, pectin,
etc. are non-toxic, available in abundance and are gaining in importance
as promising biopolymers to be employed as binders (Volpe et al., 2010