Location: National Cold Water Marine Aquaculture Center
Project Number: 8030-10600-001-027-S
Project Type: Non-Assistance Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Jul 1, 2025
End Date: Jun 30, 2030
Objective:
To establish a genetic improvement program for eastern oyster aquaculture in Maine by evaluating commercially important traits in families from a closed breeding population and deliver improved stocks to industry.
Approach:
Thirty full-sibling families will be produced each year and reared at the Darling Marine Center hatchery facility according to standard hatchery techniques. Upon reaching a mean size of approximately 5 mm, the seed produced will be tested to confirm disease-free status and deployed on two commercial farms. Each farm will receive 3000 seed per family. Families will be kept separate from one another, stocked in triplicate rearing units, and maintained according to each farm’s standard operating procedures. Submersible environmental monitoring systems will be moored at participating oyster farms throughout the performance period. At 12 and 18 months of age, a subset of oysters from each replicate unit will be measured for shell height (hinge to bill), width, depth, and total weight. Subsequently, they will be sacrificed to measure meat weight and to collect mantle tissue for genetic analysis. Pedigree information and animal models will be used to assess traits. Each phenotype at each farm will be treated as a different trait to estimate the genetic correlation between sites. Heritability and genetic correlation between traits will be estimated from values of parameters in the animal model according to standard practices.
In addition, improved models of eastern oyster growth and physiology will be developed to link environmental site characteristics to production. Oyster performance metrics will be related to high resolution, on-farm environmental data and field and laboratory experiments will be conducted to model growth using statistical (descriptive) and mechanistic (predictive) approaches. A Northeast-specific oyster Dynamic Energy Budget model will be optimized and used to identify environmental effects on growth and survival.