Microbiome and multi-omics insights into sustainable aquaculture: A triennial systematic review

Aquaculture is the fastest-growing food production sector, yet intensive practices drive disease outbreaks, antibiotic resistance, and environmental degradation, threatening long-term sustainability. The aquaculture microbiome, encompassing host-associated and environmental microbial communities, regulates nutrient cycling, pathogen suppression, immunity, and overall system resilience. This triennial systematic review (2023-2025), conducted according to PRISMA guidelines, synthesized 19 highly relevant peer-reviewed studies that applied multi-omics approaches (metagenomics, transcriptomics, metabolomics, SNP genotyping, and their integration) to aquaculture microbiomes across shrimp, finfish, and hybrid species. The studies collectively revealed diverse host-microbe-metabolite interactions underpinning growth, immunity, and disease resistance, with representative examples including microbial-metabolite-host signaling axes and microbiome-mediated immune modulation, as seen in Salinivibrio-AMP-mTOR axis, EHP-resistant shrimp via metabolic reprogramming and stable microbiota, and Bacillus-mediated diglyceride production. Beneficial taxa such as Cetobacterium and Salinivibrio, heritable microbiome traits, and sustainable interventions including insect-meal feeds, phytogenic additives, and organic copper consistently improved growth, immunity, and microbial stability while reducing dysbiosis under stress. Environmental stressors and pathogens induced reproducible shifts in microbial diversity, functional pathways, and host metabolism. These findings demonstrate that multi-omics integration is transforming aquaculture into a precision discipline, enabling microbiome-informed selective breeding, targeted probiotics, and environmentally sound nutrition. To translate these insights into practice, future research must emphasize functional validation, machine learning-driven predictive models, and ecosystem-level assessments to achieve resilient, antibiotic-reduced, and sustainable aquaculture systems.