Aquaculture is expected to expand significantly in the coming decades to meet growing demand. A key variable for understanding the potential benefit of and impact from this growth is efficiency; yet a comprehensive assessment of on-farm area use and yield is limited. Much like land-based agriculture, range and variation in yields across space, species, and practice provide insights into area use and production efficiencies. Current estimates of aquaculture yields (production per area per time) aggregate on-farm and off-farm land use into one ‘land use’ category; in contrast, we disaggregate this category to provide on-farm yield estimates and account for water area use. We use a quantitative review of scientific literature to synthesize and compare on-farm area use and yield patterns across countries, taxa, aquatic systems, data source, and production mode (n = 378). Because recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS) have been touted as a particularly efficient production mode, we also found estimates for RAS from industry (n = 4). Median, mean and range in yields among countries and taxa vary by orders of magnitude, with algal production greatly exceeding that of crustaceans, fishes and molluscs. Yields in marine systems were on average roughly 5× greater than yields in freshwater systems. RAS had particularly high yields but sparse data and estimates from private corporations were approximately 3.7× higher than literature estimates, on average. This comprehensive assessment of global aquaculture yields offers critical insight into the production efficiencies of different aquaculture forms and the large amount of variability, which could help guide aquaculture policy and practice.

中文翻译：

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水产养殖系统的全球产量

预计水产养殖将在未来几十年内大幅扩张，以满足不断增长的需求。了解这种增长的潜在效益和影响的一个关键变量是效率；然而，对农场面积利用和产量的综合评估是有限的。与陆地农业非常相似，不同空间、物种和实践的产量范围和变化提供了对区域利用和生产效率的深入了解。目前对水产养殖产量（单位面积每次产量）的估计将农场内和非农场土地利用归为一个“土地利用”类别；相比之下，我们对这一类别进行分类，以提供农场产量估计并考虑水域使用情况。我们通过对科学文献的定量回顾来综合和比较不同国家、分类群、水生系统、数据源和生产模式的农场面积利用和产量模式 ( n  = 378)。由于循环水产养殖系统 (RAS) 被认为是一种特别高效的生产模式，因此我们还发现了来自工业界的 RAS 估计值 ( n  = 4)。不同国家和不同分类单元的产量中位数、平均值和范围存在数量级差异，其中藻类产量大大超过甲壳类动物、鱼类和软体动物。海洋系统的产量平均比淡水系统的产量高约 5 倍。RAS 的产量特别高，但数据稀疏，私营企业的估计平均比文献估计高出约 3.7 倍。对全球水产养殖产量的全面评估提供了对不同水产养殖形式的生产效率和大量变异性的重要见解，这有助于指导水产养殖政策和实践。