Part 5: Key Takeaways from the 2024 Shrimp Summit
The Center for Responsible Seafood - TCRS
Our vision is a world meeting the critical need for seafood produced through regenerative processes.
Breeding and Disease Management
IN BRIEF:
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Ramraj Dhamodaraswamy?| Padmanabha Labs/HiBreeds Aquatics
It has been three?decades since the first white spot epidemic in India, but it remains a significant pathogen. It is primarily transmitted horizontally among small farms on shared brackish-water creeks and is less prevalent among inland farms using ground water. EHP causes slow growth. It is managed by stocking clean postlarvae and pre-treating pond soil with alkali (pH >10) to deactivate spores. Co-infection of EHP and?Vibrio?causes WFS, which is alleviated by low stocking densities and low salinity. Acute hepatopancreatic necrosis disease (AHPND), also known as early mortality syndrome, is not found in India. Nor is translucent postlarvae disease (TPD), an emerging?Vibrio parahaemolyticus?strain found in China and Vietnam with a toxin that is 1000 times more virulent than AHPND. However, other?Vibrio?diseases are present in India including luminescent?Vibrio?and septic hepatopancreatic necrosis (SHPN).? Ecuador and India stock?L. vannamei?at similar stocking densities, but Ecuador operates with high water exchange and little biosecurity, while India uses minimal water exchange and moderate biosecurity. Nevertheless, Ecuador has less disease losses than India. This is attributed to Ecuador’s development of disease tolerant genetic lines, while India relies on more disease-susceptible SPF stocks imported from overseas breeding companies. India would benefit from more disease-tolerant stocks. ?
Dr. Marc Le Groumellec?| Aqualma
With?P. monodon?being only 2% of wild catch in Madagascar, a breeding program was started in 1999 to produce them year-round through healthy broodstock, eliminating the need to re-introduce wild animals frequently. The status of Specific Pathogen Free (SPF) was achieved in 2003. The broodstock domestication center is part of the Unima group’s vertical integration, including nauplii production, larval rearing, shrimp grow-out farms, processing plants, and exports mainly to Europe. Unima’s domesticated SPF broodstock and postlarvae have been marketed in India since 2021, with smaller scale trials done in Vietnam and Malaysia previously. Until 2012, the design of Unima’s?P. monodon?farms was like Latin American farms – low biosecurity with a huge water supply canal. Since then, the SPF strain has been adapted progressively to smaller ponds, higher densities, greater control. New selection programs have been initiated to improve performance and to continually adapt the stocks to specific countries/regions, densities, temperatures, and other conditions. Newly selected stocks are showing strong improvement in growth rate. Unima is committed to reducing its carbon footprint through planting cashew trees, investing in solar panels, and using more sustainable feed ingredients. It is also improving animal welfare practices by inducing natural mating and spawning without eyestalk ablation. ?
?Oscar Hennig?| Center for Aquaculture Technologies
The Center for Aquaculture Technologies (CAT) is a service provider for the breeding industry, with expertise spanning genotyping, genomics, selective breeding, and genome editing. Their clients are global, and they work with an extensive range of aquatic species in addition to shrimp. Mr. Hennig outlined different types of breeding programs – mass selection, family selection, genomic selection, and genomic mass selection (the newest concept in Ecuador). With increasing complexity of a genetic breeding program, one can expect higher costs, but also higher gains in performance, predictability, efficiency, and ultimately cost reduction. The latest leap in genetic improvement is genome editing. By “silencing” some genes, there is a dramatic increase in the speed of genetic improvement, creating a major increase in value for producers. Global production of?L. vannamei??is valued at $15 billion per year, but approximately 40% is lost to disease. Ecuador is the world’s largest exporter, and it is considered to have the lowest cost of production worldwide. In 2023, CAT customers in Ecuador accounted for over 45% of production. A lesson to be learned from Ecuador’s success is that selecting strains for performance in the local environment optimizes performance for today’s pathogens, environment, and management. ?
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Robin Pearl?| American Penaeid
After nearly going out of business 7-8 years ago due to dying shrimp, API concluded that the losses were not due to disease, but rather to a genetic issue. After assessing their options, API chose to start a breeding program that is between marker-assisted selection and genomic selection. API now has a large founder population and owns and operates their own DNA genetics lab. They have sequenced the DNA of over 3.5 million shrimp. Speaking from a farmer’s perspective, Mr. Pearl gave a simplified overview of implementing a breeding program and emphasized the financial incentive of preventing costly losses. ?
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Dr. Thomas Gitterle?| iBreed Aqua
In Ecuador, it is apparent that the growth and prosperity of the shrimp industry can be attributed, in part, to their strategy of selecting animals under local environmental conditions.?L. vannamei?has enormous adaptability to different environmental and farming conditions, which makes it well-suited for selective breeding. Selecting disease resistance based only on family information may not bring sufficient response due to low accuracies and low selection intensities. A new approach to commercial breeding involves testing breeding candidates under many different environmental conditions and with pathogen pressure. This is a high biosecurity threat, but it is working in Ecuador. Other potential strategies include inducing favorable epigenetic effects (also poses a high biosecurity threat), selecting for less environmental sensitivity, genomic selection, and gene editing. New technologies like genomic selection can help select individuals with better pond performance and better resistance to disease. ?
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PANEL DISCUSSION?| Moderated by Ravi Yellanki
Despite varying perspectives, panelists agreed that India would benefit from broodstock selection for tolerance to local diseases.?Robins McIntosh, Executive Vice President, Charoen Pokphand Group Co., Ltd., emphasized that successful production results using selectively bred animals often requires changes in farm management to optimize conditions. He also had encouraging words for farmers: “I have examples in every country with farmers who have learned how to do this, and they are competing with Ecuador - maybe competing better than Ecuador. But there are not enough of them. And it’s not an expensive process, it’s a matter of managing your farm and capabilities and not overextending.” McIntosh also sees a new era taking place now with genomics and individual selection. Key take-home messages were that genetics cannot solve everything, improvements take time, and it is crucial for the breeding industry and farmers to work together.
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President
1 个月I wonder does forced labor and child labor account for these countries 80% uptick in production? ??