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INVESTIGATOR: Pan, F.; Davis, JO, .

PERFORMING INSTITUTION:
PACIFIC HYBREED, INC.
10610 NE MANITOU PARK BLVD
BAINBRIDGE ISLAND, WASHINGTON 981103375

EVALUATION OF FIELD PERFORMANCE OF HYBRID PACIFIC OYSTERS FROM CROSSBREEDING

NON-TECHNICAL SUMMARY: For generations, oyster farming has provided significant social and economic value in coastal communities. More recently, there is growing awareness of its environmental value. Farmed oysters require minimal energy and feed, filter a significant volume of water, and remove carbon and nutrients from the sea at harvest. At the same time, growers face increasingly urgent threats from environmental change and stressors, directly or indirectly attributable to climate change, that will likely become more significant in the future. These environmental stressors create the potential for significant reductions in shellfish yields in the years ahead. Breeding programs can improve yields of oysters, especially in regions such as the U.S. West Coast where growers reply on hatchery-produced seed. The primary goal of this SBIR project for Pacific Hybreed, Inc. is to increase production of farmed Pacific oysters through crossbreeding.Crossbreeding to produce within-species hybrid lines has provided massive improvements to yields for corn and other land crops. This project, focused on the Pacific oyster, the largest crop for the shellfish industry on the U.S. West Coast (from California to Alaska) will support the development of hybrid oysters. Published research shows that hybrids can have significantly higher yields. Research efforts have been proposed to utilize crossbreeding and produce distinct hybrid lines optimized for specific growing conditions in different geographies and ocean conditions, now and as they change in the future. The project includes critical field testing of many different genetic lines developed for the project, in multiple locations, to find the correlation among higher performances, specific genetics and local environmental conditions.

OBJECTIVES: The major goal of this Phase I, SBIR proposal is development of genetically improved Pacific oyster, Crassostrea gigas, through crossbreeding and field trials. We propose to conduct rigorous field trials on different, within-species hybrid lines, produced by diallel crosses of partially inbred lines of C. gigas. Yield performances (the product of survivorship and growth rate) of hybrid C. gigas will be measured at multiple field sites, in collaboration with our industry partners. A secondary goal is focused on expanding the current repository of inbred lines for an increased capacity to produce new hybrid lines.The specific objectives of the research effort includeselecting hybrid lines for better field performances, estimating components of genetic variances, and expanding our repository of inbred lines using selected wild-type families. The research has two technical goals that can be accomplished within a Phase I research window,1. Make diallelcrosses of first-generation inbred lines to produce many unique hybrid lines for field testing, to estimate the contribution of different inbred lines to variability in growth and survival at the early-seed stage across different environments.2. Make additional inbred lines from pair-mated, wild-type families that have been selected for better field performance to expand the repository of inbred lines. These new inbred lines will allow multiple diallel crosses for yearly production of new hybrids.The technical question that needs to be answered is: Do better-performing hybrid lines maintain yield performances across different environments? If the results of the research provide a positive answer, breeding program could be made substantially more efficient.