Pipette and paper: Combining molecular and genealogical methods to assess a Nile tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus) breeding program

Abstract

[Extract] Aquaculture selective breeding programs employ a closed nucleus mating strategy whereby animals displaying sought-after characteristics are mated to produce next generation offspring with increased pre-valence of desirable phenotypes. Offspring exhibiting high genetic merit for favorable traits are then usually chosen as candidate parents for the subsequent breeding cycle. The selective breeding process is replicated each succeeding generation in order to accumulate genetic gain within the breeding population. The long term success of these closed breeding systems is dependent on a number of factors: including, the heritability of a trait, the intensity of selection, the additive genetic variance observed in the founding population, and the amount of additive genetic variance maintained over subsequent generations (Falconer et al., 1996; Loughnan et al., 2016). If breeding practices are not properly managed, the number of animals with high relatedness will increase (Gjedrem and Baranski, 2009b), leading to a substantial loss of genetic diversity over subsequent generations (Pante et al.,2001). The maintenance of genetic diversity is critical to accommodate current and future changes in production environments, and if left unchecked, it can lead to inbreeding through increased homozygosity and deleterious fitness consequences associated with inbreeding depression (Pante et al., 2001). This loss of genetic diversity can also hamper progress within the selective breeding program as it limits the amount of genetic variance available for selection (Falconer, 1960).