LAUSR

Abstract Artificial and natural foodsconsumed by farmed fishcontain glucose polymers in the form of starch (vegetable origin) and glycogen (animal origin), thus amylase activity in the digestive tract of fish has been routinely evaluated in ontogenetic and food response studies. After reviewing the available literature on fish digestive amylase published during a time span of five years (2015–2019), a wide variety of methods for measuring amylase activity have been found with large differences in substrate, substrateconcentration, pH, temperature, incubation time, measurement of hydrolysis products and definition of amylase units in fish. In digestive physiology studies, this variability and rationale for the methods make the amylolyticcapacity among fish in rearingconditions difficult tocompare. Based on the above, the most used method -using starch as a substrate and dinitrosalicylic acid reagent to quantify the reducing products generated by starch hydrolysis- was selected to be redesigned to work under temperature and pHconditions,closer to fish physiology and with a more practical protocol at microplate level. This new method is proposed as an alternative for standardising amylase activity measurement in farmed fish.