Genetic Improvement of White Bass Broodstocks for Production of Superior Hybrid Striped Bass

The proposed project seeks to identify superior strains and families of white bass for aquacultureby evaluating the progeny of three wild strains collected from a broad geographic range. Thecollections will be designed to evaluate the performance of genetically distinct strains. In orderto control for the effect of family differences, five families will be collected from each of thestrains and their performance will be compared and evaluated. The strains will be reared intriplicate in a recirculating aquaculture facility under the same environmentally controlledconditions for twenty four weeks. Comparisons will be made between strains for the followingperformance characteristics: growth rate, uniformity of growth, feed conversion efficiency,survival, and dress-out percentage. Representatives of individual families and strains will beidentified by DNA microsatellite analysis (genetic tags) using primer pairs developed for Moronespecies. Genetic tags will permit identification of the largest fish by their parentage before theyare selected at the end of the project for potential future breeding. As a control, a subset of eachfamily will be individually PIT tagged, and their performance will serve as a comparison to thegenetically identified and selected largest fish.