Monday, May 16, 2011

Combatting sea lice with genetics

Tests on three age groups of farmed Atlantic salmon point to the same conclusion, that there is a huge variation in how well various salmon families tackle salmon lice. A breeding company is now putting Nofima’s research results into practice and offering eggs that are more resistant to lice.

Nofima has also found a high genetic correlation between the numbers of sessile and motile adult lice on the salmon. When fewer lice attach to the fish, there are also fewer sexually mature lice. Consequently, testing of various families’ resistance to lice can now be limited to the number of sessile lice per fish, in controlled challenge experiments. Read more ...

This blog is written by Martin Little, The Aquaculturists, published and supported by the International Aquafeed Magazine from Perendale Publishers

No comments:

Post a Comment