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NORTHAMPTON, MA / ACCESSWIRE / March 7, 2024 / Illumina

WorldFish and the Earlham Institute are using genomics to improve tilapia for the sake of global food sustainability

Originally published on Illumina News Center

The United Nations projects that the total human population will exceed 9 billion by 2040. Feeding that many people will demand advances in sustainable farming, especially in aquaculture. John Benzie, PhD, Karim Gharbi, PhD, and Tarang Mehta, PhD, recently spoke with Illumina about how their organizations are improving farmed tilapia through genomics, with the ultimate aim of improving aquaculture in the developing world.

WorldFish: Better aquaculture through selective breeding
Benzie is principal scientist at WorldFish, based in Penang, Malaysia. His organization works to transform aquatic food systems to reduce hunger, malnutrition, and poverty. One of their most groundbreaking achievements to date is the genetically improved farmed tilapia, or GIFT, a selectively bred strain of Nile tilapia introduced in 1988 that grows twice as fast as wild varieties and to a larger size.

Tilapia is the second-most-farmed fish in the world, after carp. It can be raised on small farms, and it's an important source of protein, iron, potassium, and other nutrients for developing nations in sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, and South Asia. Benzie explained that GIFT's faster growth means a farmer can grow more fish in a shorter season, which could make all the difference in whether they turn a profit on their investment.

Keeping small-farm production both economically and environmentally sustainable is one of WorldFish's primary interests. The organization makes GIFT's germplasm available to research organizations or national governments that agree to use it responsibly, and by their estimations, today GIFT is farmed in 14 countries and constitutes fully half of the world's tilapia production.

WorldFish continues to improve fish traits through their selective breeding programs, which primarily look for disease resistance and ability to withstand changes in temperature and salinity.

Benzie described how these programs work, step by step: "Every year we take out old fish from the previous generation. We make calculations based on the pedigree we have-we know how they're all related to each other-and we use the best fish to breed the next generation." They choose promising males and females to pair, incubate their eggs, and raise the newborn fish. "We keep each family separate so we know who is who-who the parents were-and we then take these fish at three months of age, and put in a little microtransponder so we can identify each individual fish." Then the fish are moved to a bigger tank once they reach adulthood, and the process starts over again.