Location: National Cold Water Marine Aquaculture Center
Project Number: 8030-10600-002-009-S
Project Type: Non-Assistance Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Jan 5, 2026
End Date: Nov 5, 2027
Objective:
To conduct progeny tests of USDA ARS germplasm intended for genetic improvement as part of the northeast eastern oyster breeding program and maintain broodstock for said breeding program.
Approach:
This project is designed to cover two cohorts and will last a minimum of three years. Budget reflects the first cohort only. During winter and spring of Year 1, the cooperator will prepare farm space and manufacture gear needed for the project. In the spring, ARS will spawn wild oysters to create a genetically diverse base population for a northeast regional breeding program. This population will consist of up to100 single-pair crosses (families). ARS will rear the progeny in land-based hatchery and nursery systems until they reach 4 mm in size. Seed will be certified disease-free and packed in mesh spat bags for farm deployment. The cooperator will receive approximately 1000 seed oysters per family (up to 100,000 seed total) in mid-June to maximize early growth, minimize disease-related juvenile mortality and overwintering losses associated with small size at deployment. Seed from each cohort will be maintained at the farm for 18 months (up to 36 months for a subset of seed to be held as future broodstock) using routine on-farm practices with some modification. Modifications include ensuring families are clearly labeled and reared separately throughout the breeding cycle and replication. During the first five months of deployment, the cooperator will tend to seed by defouling, increasing gear mesh size, and splitting bags to maintain healthy seed densities on a schedule appropriate for their farm. The cooperator and ARS will communicate regularly during this period and ARS assistance with these tasks will be left to the cooperator’s discretion. To preserve the genetic variation in each family and allow unbiased assessment of family-specific growth traits that will inform selection of future generations, size grading is not advisable; however, the experimental design allows for ~ %10 loss whenever seed are transferred to larger mesh gear. Following the first overwintering, ARS will coordinate access to experimental material to stock replicate (3) bags for performance evaluation. Performance will be evaluated at 12 and 18 months post-fertilization. The cooperator will continue to maintain the material in replicate bags until data analysis is completed, at which point ARS will pit-tag a subset of oysters from best performing families to serve as broodstock for future generations. Pit-tagged oysters will be combined into fewer, larger mesh bags. Because the cooperator’s farm receives overset of wild seed, additional effort is necessary to remove wild recruits from experimental material before performance evaluation. Concurrently with seed deployment, ARS will install a solar-charged cellular data buoy equipped with water quality instrumentation to characterize environmental conditions on the farm. ARS staff will maintain the monitoring equipment and share environmental data with the cooperator. The breeding program will consist of overlapping generations, meaning a new cohort will be produced annually despite a time to market of 18 months. Therefore, the number of seed/replicate bags deployed at the cooperators farm will increase in the 2nd year of the project. In subsequent years, the number of seed/bags will remain relatively stable.