Automated image analysis of muscle phenotypes for genetic marker discovery in Atlantic salmon

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Around one out of every two fish eaten each day now comes from aquaculture. Salmon and other farmed fish are at a relatively early stage of domestication and there is considerable scope for increasing production efficiency and quality by using modern genetic technologies to select broodstock. Salmon that produce more muscle fibres have higher growth rate and superior growth rate. In order to discover genetic markers associated with a higher fibre number it is first necessary to measure up to a million muscle fibres in each of hundreds of individual salmon. This project will exploit advances in image analysis to develop a highly automated workflow to capture, recognise and quantify images of muscle fibres to facilitate this task. The trait data obtained will be integrated with genetic analysis to develop a practical means of selecting superior quality broodstock with a high fibre muscle number.