Sustainable genetic improvement of Pacific oysters in Tasmania and South Australia

Funded Activity Summary

We have demonstrated that oyster characteristics deemed valuable by industry can be improved by selective breeding. We and industry are convinced that substantial performance increases for commercial lines are achievable.
Thus far we have concentrated our efforts on a single trait (growth), but we have a number of family lines which permit the improvement of several traits simultaneously. We plan to continue selecting for increased growth rate and combine these advances with other desirable traits such as high meat yield and irradication of the deleterious curl-back trait. This will yield a much improved commercial product.
Modifications to our existing protocols need to be trialed to see whether substantial gains in time and savings of funds are possible in the development of a long-term breeding strategy for broodstock improvement. We need to:

1. continue the breeding program through at least three more generations, in both the mass selection and family lines, by producing, where possible, improved lines every year rather than every two years as currently. Performance assessment will continue through to the second year.
2. develop a selection index which uses all information about genetic merit over several commercial traits. This is the sum of the commercial gains an individual can transmit weighted by commercial value.
3. monitor grow-out performance at one year of age and two years of age, to determine if crosses can be made at one year of age rather than two years. This would speed selective improvement. We need to assess whether performance at one year is a good indicator of performance at market size (currently ~2.5 years).

If the Joint Venture company (JVC) proposed to commercialise our work is not established, then we will need to:

4. work with industry to conduct trials of particular lines in both Tasmania and South Australia under full commercial conditions.
5. develop sophisticated long-term breeding plans which yield on-going performance improvements while avoiding the deleterious effects of inbreeding. These plans will be based on analysis of data collected during the project, and require a major commitment from both technical staff and geneticists.
FRDC funding is thus required to complete the development program and, if the JVC is not established, to conduct the commercialisation trials and development of breeding plans. If the JVC is established, then we would provide it with broodstock for the trials but would expect it to develop its own long-term breeding strategy with input from and collaboration with our technical staff and geneticists.

Objectives:
1. Continued production of mass selection lines for growth rate and family lines for other industry-desired traits.
2. Creation of crossbred family lines to assess the feasibility of combining desirable traits from different families into a single line.
3. Development of a multi-trait selection index.
4. If the Joint Venture Company is not established by November 2000, we have the following additional objective: Assessment of the performance of chosen lines in full-scale commercial trials.
5. If the Joint Venture Company is not established by November 2000, we have the following additional objective: Development of a breeding plan for sustainable genetic improvement.
6. Development of a commercilisation strategy within 12 months of start.

Funded Activity Details

Start Date: 30-12-2000

End Date: 05-01-2006

Funding Scheme: Funding Scheme not available

Funding Amount: $737,531.00

Funder: Fisheries Research and Development Corporation

Research Topics

ANZSRC Field of Research (FoR)

There are no FoR codes available for this funding activity

ANZSRC Socio-Economic Objective (SEO)

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Other Keywords

Animal Technologies | Aquaculture | Biology | Business

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