A new approach to fish breeding could help U.S. aquaculture grow safely and profitably, with support from a Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research (FFAR) Growing Impact Award, and matching funds from Washington State University (WSU) and Troutlodge.
The three institutions are providing a combined $1,566,716 to WSU researchers who are developing a practical way to produce healthy, sterile farmed rainbow trout. Sterility allows fish to devote more energy to growth, increasing farm productivity. It also prevents escaped farmed fish from breeding with wild fish and spreading traits that could disrupt ecosystems.
Current methods for inducing sterility in farmed fish are limited to adding an extra set of chromosomes, a method that is not fully effective and can cause fish health and production problems.
Led by Michael Phelps, an associate professor in WSU’s Department of Animal Sciences, the research builds on his 2021 FFAR New Innovator in Food & Agriculture Research Award (New Innovator Award), which found that rainbow trout could be sterilized by preventing reproductive cells from developing. Although that method was too complex for commercial use, it helped his team identify two promising and potentially scalable approaches that use the trout’s natural biology to control fertility.
Under the first approach, specially produced male trout pass down a trait that makes their female offspring sterile. The second uses female trout whose eggs produce offspring that cannot make eggs or sperm. The researchers are breeding and studying the most viable offspring produced from these methods over several generations, tracking their fertility, health and growth. Successful approaches will then move into larger trials with Troutlodge, a commercial trout producer, and could eventually guide similar work in other farmed fish species.