Genetic diversity in freshwater prawns : has wild genetic variation been captured and exploited successfully in culture stocks?
2009
Mather, Peter B.
Genetic diversity is the resource that animal breeders exploit when they attempt to improve culture traits in aquatic organisms. Farmed stocks with naturally low levels of genetic diversity or those that have lost significant amounts of genetic diversity as a consequence of how they have been established then managed in capacity are likely to be less responsive to attempts to improve their culture attributes and may suffer from negative impacts of inbreeding. Macrobrachium rosenbergii or giant freshwater prawn (GFP) is an important culture species in many tropical and sub-tropical regions of the world and yet very little information is available on the natural genetic diversity present in this species or how well it has been captured and managed when culture stocks were developed. Here I report on recent work that has characterised that levels and patterns of genetic diversity in wild and cultured GFP stocks both within the natural distribution of the species in Asia and elsewhere where the species has been translocated to establish culture industries. This information will be discussed in the light of current and proposed future attempts to improve culture stocks in stock improvement programs.
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