20 Industry Review-Freshwater Fish
30 years of tilapia breeding programs An essential contribution for a healthy and profitable industry By Rajesh Joshi, Anders Skaarud and Anne Vik Mariussen
Tilapia aquaculture has grown tremendously in the past 30 years from barely 400,000 tonnes in the early 1990s to around 7 million tonnes in 2021. Nile tilapia is today the most widely farmed single fish species in finfish aquaculture, playing an important role in food security and generating income and employment in many parts of rural Asia, Latin America and Africa.
Among the most important input factors
Behind this impressive development, there is an increasing adoption of tilapia farming due to the expansion of farming areas and new methods used. Of all farm input technologies, breeding and genetics are among the most important contributors to improvements in productivity. Several of today´s tilapia breeds far exceed the performance of their original wild ancestors. Breeding technology has resulted in accumulative gains that contribute to a healthy and profitable industry. We, GenoMar Genetics Group, have been at the forefront of this development by consistently investing, innovating and managing tilapia breeding programs and disseminating genetic progress to farmers. Under the brands GenoMar, Aquabel and AquaAmerica, we currently distribute more than 500 million fish to customers in Asia and Latin America annually and this number is growing rapidly every year. In 2021, we are celebrating the 30th anniversary of work with Nile tilapia breeding and we have prepared a couple of articles to divulgate this important achievement.
November/December 2021 AQUA Culture Asia Pacific
In this first article we focus on the breeding programs and the evolution and future of our selection goals. A second article will concentrate on the effect of traditional and novel selection methods.
Breeding programs for different farming conditions
A breeding program is a structured set of activities aimed at generating genetic improvement in a specific plant or animal population. GenoMar manages three independent breeding programs using the GenoMar (1991), Aquabel (2006) and AquaAmerica (2010) selection lines as the reference. By working with different selection lines, that differ in origin, geographical specialisation and selection traits, breeding companies are able to maintain genetic diversity and have the flexibility to develop different products that suit the needs of each market. These selection lines are kept in specially designed and highly biosecure facilities called breeding nuclei to secure high-health status. Selection takes place in a relatively small group of fish (pedigree) using multiple sources of information from nucleus, laboratory and commercial environments (test groups). Generation interval is minimised and currently down to 6-9 months enabling more than one generation per year. The genetic progress obtained in the breeding nucleus is disseminated to the value chain via a pyramidal scheme with “multiplying generations” so the favourable genes of a few high merit individuals can be “trickled down” into billions of production fish at the farms (Figure 1).
