Resumen de Optimización de la creación de poblaciones base en programas de mejora en acuicultura
J. Fernandez, M. A. Toro Muñoz, A.K. Sonesson, Blanca Villanueva Santamarina
The success of an aquaculture breeding program critically depends on the way in which the base population of breeders is constructed since all the genetic variability for any trait is contained in those initial founders. Traditionally base populations were created from a number of wild strains by sampling equal numbers from each strain. However, if improved strains are already available, mean phenotypic values for economically important traits can be used as a criterion to optimize the sampling. Also, the increasing availability of genome-wide genotype information in aquaculture species could help in the estimation of relationships within and between strains and to optimize the percentage of individuals to be sampled from them. This study explores the advantages of using phenotypic and genomewide information when constructing base populations for aquaculture breeding programs in terms of initial and subsequent trait performance and genetic diversity level. Results show that compromise solutions between diversity and performance exist. Up to 7% higher levels of phenotypic performance can be achieved at the same level of global diversity in the base population by optimizing the selection of breeders instead of sampling equal numbers from each strain. The higher performance observed in the base population persisted during ten generations of phenotypic selection applied in the subsequent breeding program.
