The importance and benefits of running selective breeding in aquaculture

The majority of plants and farm animal production is presently based on genetically improved seeds and stocks. Genetic improvement in aquaculture, however, lags far behind plants and farm animals. It is estimated that at present less than 10% of aquaculture production is based on genetically improved stocks, despite the fact that annual genetic gains reported for aquatic species are substantially higher than that of farm animals. In livestock, genetic gain in growth rate is typically 5 percent per generation, which is 5-6 times less than in aquatic species. The relatively high heritabilities and Large Phenotypic and genetic variation for growth rate and most other traits of economic importance combined with high fecundity and short generation intervals in most species explain the high genetic gains obtained in many aquaculture breeding programs. If genetically improved animals are used, production may be dramatically increased and feed conversion and survival were improved, that leads to better utilization of limited resources such as feed, labour, water, and land. Genetic improvement also reduces production costs as more animals can be grown using the same resources. There could be several reasons why use of selective breeding in aquaculture is far behind plants and terrestrial farm animals, including availability of  fry of wild stock, little knowledge about controlling reproduction of some pieces, lack of knowledge about the economic benefit of breeding programs, lack of knowledge about quantitative genetics and how to start and run breeding programs, substantial investments needed, many aquaculture farmers do not willing to cooperate with researchers, researchers working in the field have not effectively been able to promote the benefits of selective breeding and those extending knowledge to aquaculture lack information and knowledge about the potential of selective breeding.