Genome Canada Competition III
Total funding awarded including co-funding is $18,186,076 for the period January 1, 2006 to December 31, 2009.
Project Summary
For many years, traditional fisheries in Atlantic Canada were major contributors to the cultural identity and economies of the region. Declining fish stocks brought many challenges to this industry and to the local communities dependent on the revenue it generated. The subsequent growth of the salmon aquaculture industry helped revitalize this region and now provides considerable benefits to the local economy. For example salmon farming in New Brunswick generated annual sales of over $200 million in 2002 and generated one in four direct jobs in Charlotte County (New Brunswick, Agriculture, Fisheries and Aquaculture, 2002).
Courtesy of Seumas Walker, Huntsman Marine Science Centre
One approach to maintain growth of the aquaculture industry relies on diversification to rear finfish species other than salmon. Declining wild populations of cod worldwide have resulted in a renewed interest in farming this renowned species, with the aim of preserving wild populations while meeting consumer demand. Wild-caught Atlantic cod have been raised in net pens in Newfoundland on a relatively small scale for the last 10 years, achieving modest production levels estimated at 150 tonnes with an export value of approximately $500,000 in 2000. However, all activity has now ceased due to the moratorium on cod harvesting.
Hence, cod aquaculture is of increasing importance in Atlantic Canada, and in Newfoundland there are plans to develop cod farming to a projected 32,000 tons by 2010 (Moir, 2003). Protocols have been developed for rearing this species in captivity. However, fish are expensive to maintain and feed, and some individuals do not respond well to culture conditions. Therefore, the aquaculture industry would benefit greatly from strategies that allow selection of cod that perform well in terms of growth, resistance to disease and stress, as well as other economically important factors, while ultimately giving good product quality.
This program will develop tools that will allow the aquaculture industry to identify cod with traits of commercial importance. We will develop fish breeding programs in Newfoundland and New Brunswick and identify individuals among these cod families that show good resistance to disease and stressors such as changes in water temperature, or effects of being handled. In parallel, we will sequence several thousand cod genes, and look for differences in these genes between individual fish. This will allow us to identify a set of molecular markers for use in cod, and to associate these markers with fish that perform well or badly under aquaculture conditions.
The data generated through this program represents a unique and specific resource to the aquaculture industry in Eastern Canada. Similar initiatives are underway in Norway and Iceland, looking at genes and traits in broodstock within the cod breeding programs in those countries.