Fingerprinting Salmon Bloodlines
February 26th, 2008 by AndrewA unique form of genetic fingerprinting for salmon is being used to:
- increase weight gain performance
- increase resistance to amoebic gill disease
- reduce the incidence of early maturation
- improved carcase characteristics
The fin-clipping exercise is unique among selective breeding programs worldwide. The tiny fin samples are used to ‘DNA fingerprint’ each fish and determine its family tree. Without this capability, the 140 salmon families produced each year would have to be kept in separate tanks until large enough to tag, an expensive exercise that would subject the families to different ‘nursery’ conditions, making it difficult to compare their performance.
Tiny fin samples are used to ‘DNA fingerprint’ each fish and determine its family tree. The Wayatinah tag team recorded a ten-fold difference in the weights of the young salmon. With 30–40 per cent of this variation attributable to genetic rather than environmental factors, this encouraging finding suggests great performance gains can be made by breeding from the best bloodlines.
Progeny from the breeding program will be provided by Saltas to Tasmanian salmon growers as smolt for commercial production, and to hatcheries as eggs and young fish (to smolt stage) for growing into broodstock.
Additional information about the program is available here.
Tags: australia, DNA, salmon, tasmania
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