Developing Genetic Markers In Penaeus

This proposal is to develop genetic markers in Pacific white shrimp (Penaeus vannamei) forselective breeding in a closed hatchery environment. The worldwide pond aquaculture industryis plagued by disease problems that have decimated a large part of the industry. The solution tothis problem may lie in a new industry devoted specifically to the production of seed stockgenetically selected for resistance to pathogens or other economically valuable traits. In thisproject, we will develop and test class of genetic markers called microsatellites. These markerswill permit identification of parents, offspring, and siblings, and provide tools for selecting asbroodstock that remain in the hatchery unexposed to the pathogen. Those parents, or siblingsalso retained in the hatchery, could then be used to produce pathogen resistant seed stock,thereby eliminating the need to return surviving, but potentially contaminated, animals to thehatchery where they might infect existing broodstock animals. This proposal has been developedin cooperation with Dr. Dallas Weaver, Scientific Hatcheries, Inc., who has submitted an SBIRproposal to develop a closed-system hatchery.