DNA identification of Chinook salmon in the creative salmon and Marine Harvest selective breeding program

Description

This project will increase collaboration between the finfish industry in BC and DFO that will lead to improved broodstock development and identification. The study proposed herein will enable companies to undertake breeding programs without the expense of maintaining the numerous ‘family' tanks currently required to obtain a pedigree for fish used in breeding programs. This research will also provide the BC industry with access to a new technology that may ultimately be used in a variety of ways including product traceability and ‘branding', assessment of commercially available brood strains and marker-assisted selective breeding. We will publish our methods so that the industry can pursue molecular genetics research and applications in the most cost-effective manner (i.e. in any molecular genetics laboratory) in the future. This project will facilitate the merging of molecular and traditional quantitative genetic methods to broodstock development in BC, providing the industry with the most efficient methods of improving their strains and evaluating new strains as they become available.

Program Name

Aquaculture Collaborative Research and Development Program (ACRDP)

Year(s)

2006 to 2007

Ecoregion(s)

Pacific: Vancouver Island West Coast

Principal Investigator(s)

Ruth Withler
Email: WithlerR@pac.dfo-mpo.gc.ca