fish breeding for future environments under climate change

Selective Breeding in Aquaculture for

Future Environments under

Climate Change

15-17 February 2016

FAO Headquarters, Rome,

Italy

FAO International Symposium on

The Role of Agricultural Biotechnologies in Sustainable Food

Sysem and Nutrition

1

Panya Sae-Lim, Antti Kause, Han A. Mulder, and Ingrid Olesen

Source: http://www.fao.org/3/a-bc547e.pdf

Food security and aquaculture

• Food security is the key element to reduce poverty and hunger

• Aquaculture has been contributing significantly to food security (Kent, 1995)

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FISH TO 2030

Prospects for Fisheries and Aquaculture

FAOSTAT, 2016

2

70.19078.625

93.612

138.124

151.771

0.000

20.000

40.000

60.000

80.000

100.000

120.000

140.000

160.000

2013 2020 2030

Million (t)

Projected aquaculture and fish consumption

Aquaculture Food fish consumption

“ensuring that all people at all times have both physical and economic access to

the basic food that they need” – FAO, 1983

Climate change

• Consequences of climate change (IPCC and FAO, 2009)

– Global warming

– Sea level rise

– Changes of ocean productivity

– Water shortage

– More frequent extreme climate events

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Climate change implications for fisheries and aquaculture

Overview of current scientific knowledge

FAO, 2009

3

Source: http://climate.nasa.gov/

Climate change

• Impact of aquaculture on climate change

– No greenhouse gas (GHG) emission from aquatic animals

– Two majors contributions to GHG emissions in salmon production* (Wright, 2011)

Input power from fossil fuel

Sewage/waste

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*Salmon Aquaculture GHG Emissions

A Preliminary comparison of land-based closed containment

and open ocean net-pen aqauculture

4

Source: http://www.kidzworld.com/article/1423-fossil-fuel-energy

Effects of climate change on aquaculture

• Opportunities

– Prolong growth period in

temperate regions

– Increase growth and production

– New farm species

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Climate change implications for fisheries and aquaculture

Overview of current scientific knowledge

FAO, 2009

5

• Major challenges

Heat stress

Outbreak of existing pathogens

Dispersal of new diseases

Change in water (sea surface) temperature

Selective breeding can increase animals’ adaptation to climate change

Major challenges

• Rising water temperature

– Heat stress

– reduced growth and survival

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Mallet et al., 1999. Growth modelling in accordance with daily

water temperature in European grayling (Thymallus thymallus

L.) Can J Fish Aquat Sci 56: 994-1000

6

• Genotype-by-environment

interaction for growth increases

– Lower-than-expected genetic gains in

the other environments (Falconer 1952; Robertson

1959; Mulder & Bijma 2005; Sae-Lim et al., 2014, 2015)

Perf

orm

an

ce

Temperature

ToptTmax

Major challenges

• Reduced growth and summer mortality

– Simulated global warming by +2 oC

• Lower appetite and growth of rainbow trout in

late summer (reviewed by Morgan et al., 2001; Dockray

et al., 1996; Linton et al., 1997)

– 25 % summer mortality of farmed abalone in

Australia - $1.75 million lower profit*

– Mass mortality event (>20%) of Pacific oyster in

Ireland (Malham et al., 2009)

– Combination of environmental and biological factors

causes summer mortality in Pacific oyster (Dégremont

et al., 2007; 2010; Dégremont, 2011; Samain et al., 2007)

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*Robinson, Nicholas (Personal communication, 2015) 7

Abalone temperature challenge test*

Red = temperature setting

Blue =actual temperature

Black = mortality

Major challenges

• Increase prevalence of pathogen and

change spatial distribution of (new)

disease outbreaks

– More virulent parasites and bacteria in salmon

(McCullough 1999; Harvell et al., 2002; Crozier et al., 2008)

• lower host resistance and higher pathogen

population growth (Marcogliese, 2001)

– Lower resistance to Streptococcus iniae in Tilapia

(O. mossambicus) in low (19 and 23 oC) and high

(31 and 35 oC) water temperature (Ndong et al., 2007)

– Northward expansion of oyster diseases in the

U.S. east coast (Ford, 1996; Cook et al., 1998; Harvell et

al., 2002)

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Adaptive measures

• Three major adaptive strategies

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2) Adoption of

selective breedingAquaculture

1) Breeding for

“robustness”

3) Reduction of

environmental loads

Climate change

Human food

demand

1) Robustness to climate change

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• Fish species are often “poikilothermic”

(“having a body temperature that varies with the temperature of its surroundings”)

– More vulnerable to temperature changes than livestock

• Breeding for “robustness” (Knap, 2005; Ten Napel et al., 2006; Star et al., 2008; Hoffmann, 2010;

Rauw and Gomez-Raya, 2015)

- High production potential

- Resilience, maintain homeostasis

- Take short periods to recover

Breeding goal = Production +

Homeostasis or adaptation +

Disease resistance


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Bradshaw, 1965; Falconer, 1990; De Jong and Bijma

2002; Kolmodin et al., 2003; Sae-Lim et al., 2015a,b

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• Maintain homeostasis = Reducing environmental sensitivity

No sensitivity

Pe

rfo

rma

nce

Enviroment

No difference in

sensitivity

Enviroment

Difference in

sensitivity

Enviroment

Change in ranking

Enviroment

“A presence of GxE interaction = genetic variation in environmental sensitivity”

• Evidences of genetic variation in heat

tolerance in aquaculture

– Thermal sensitivity of growth in rainbow

trout (Sae-Lim et al., 2013)

– Genotype by temperature interaction of

growth in rainbow trout (McKay et al., 1984;

Fishback et al., 2002)

– Different transcriptional responses to heat

stress in Pacific oyster (Lang et al., 2009)

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Estimated breeding values of sires for body weight

across water temperature (oC), using reaction norm

model.

Sae-Lim et al. / One size fits all, PhD thesis (2013)

It is possible to select for heat tolerance

• Disease resistance and Tolerance

(Kause and Ødegård, 2012)

– Different traits by definition

• Pathogen burden increases with

higher water temperature

– Tolerant genotypes is favorable

– No study in this context

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Kause and Ødegård / Frontiers in Genetics Vol. 3, Article 262 (2012)

T(oC)

• Low adoption of selective breeding

– Selective breeding is a long-term, cost-effective

strategy.

– Less than 10% of world aquaculture (Gjedrem et al.,

2012)

High inbreeding, inbreeding depression and

environmental sensitivity

Poor performance with low growth and survival

Less efficient use of resources, i.e., electricity,

land, water, and feed per kg fish

– Breeding programme is prerequisite for utilizing

genomic information, e.g., QTL-IPN in salmon

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2) Adoption of selective breeding

Aquaculture production (fish and shellfish) based on varying

frequencies of genetically improved stocks with a genetic gain

of 5.4% per year (12.5% genetic gain per generation/ 2.3 years

generation interval).

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Gjedrem (Personal communication, 2016) 15


0

1000

2000

3000

4000

0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24

30 years agoToday

Months in seawater

Weig

ht

(g)

$

Rapid growth through selective breeding of salmon in Norway

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Thodesen et al. (2001)

*Gjedrem, personal communication, 2016

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Selected (5th gen) vs. Wild salmon (Thodesen et al., 2001)

S - W, %

Growth +113

Feed-uptake +40

Protein utilization +9

Energy utilization +14

Feed conversion efficiency +20

Norwegian salmon industry 2014

Reduced feed cost:

NOK 5 billion (>USD 611 million)

~ 0.5 million tonnes/yr*

• Defining breeding goals

– Environmental consequences of genetic improvement (Besson et al., 2016)

Combining life cycle analysis and bio-economic model

“Environmental values”

– Selection for growth rate and feed conversion ratio in catfish

Lower GHG emission and other environmental loads

Limiting factor is stocking density

• Possibility to evaluate breeding strategies

– (Total) genetic gain and environmental loads

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3) Life cycle analysis and breeding goals

• Climate change may pose opportunities and challenges to

aquaculture

• Selective breeding is a long-term, cost-effective strategy to adapt

aquaculture to climate change

– Increased robustness will be the key to success

“Stakeholders should support a boost in the adoption of selective

breeding to improve global food security under climate change”

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Concluding remarks

fish breeding for future environments under climate change

Education