I-Corps: Biomarker-assisted Breeding for Yield and Resilience of Commercial Shellfish Aquaculture in a Changing Ocean

水产养殖是全球粮食生产中增长最快的部门，目前占全球水产产量的一半以上，2013年已超过捕捞渔业。不幸的是，水产养殖在很大程度上依赖于野生种群的自然繁殖或孵化场繁殖，很少有驯化物种。如果我们要满足海产品需求，并应对水产养殖可持续性面临的严峻挑战，如沿海种植区竞争加剧、野生和养殖种群之间的不利相互作用、新出现的疾病、海洋变暖和海洋酸化，就必须迅速纠正这种对野生圈养鱼类的原始开发。商业育种计划可以帮助应对这些全球挑战，方法是加速发展和改进用于水产养殖的驯化种群，同时减少或消除与野生种群的相互作用。太平洋牡蛎是全球最重要的水产养殖物种之一。该物种在美国西海岸的生产已经受到海洋酸化和新出现的疾病的影响。项目参与者最近成立了一家初创贝类养殖公司Pacific Hybreed，用于商业开发高性能贝类幼虫和早期幼体（“种子”），以供应区域和全球水产养殖市场。I-Corps项目将帮助这家初创公司在气候和海洋条件不断变化的情况下，将数十年的基础生物学研究转化为安全、稳定和可持续的贝类供应。杂交玉米和其他作物产量的提高与杂交牡蛎产量的提高在生物学上的相似性表明，贝类养殖公司的发展与现代作物种业的发展之间存在商业上的相似性。现代作物种业如今已成为一个价值200亿美元的国际企业。要更全面地了解水产养殖物种将如何对世界海洋的环境变化作出反应，需要将生理、遗传和环境信息结合起来。在过去的15年里，这个团队反复证明，自交系的实验杂交产生的杂交活力与玉米和其他作物的杂交活力一样引人注目。因此，杂交育种是该项目创新的核心基础；在这种情况下，团队？通过对太平洋牡蛎杂交活力的遗传、基因组和生理原因的跨学科研究，有望开发出生物标记物，以提高鉴定优质品系和优质杂交遗传物质的效率。该项目的目标是将这些研究元素应用于优质育苗和高性能贝类幼虫和早期幼鱼（“种子”）的商业化生产。这支I-Corps团队将参与项目的创业培训，进行市场调研，并制定市场策略。该团队将联系约100家贝类养殖户，其中大部分是太平洋海岸贝类养殖户协会的成员，以确定(1)美国西海岸育苗存量和种子市场的规模和结构，(2)与种子供应相关的生产成本，(3)目前可用的育苗存量和种子产品的类型，以及(4)这些产品的价格结构，包括三倍体和二倍体种子的溢价。与潜在客户的互动将使团队能够制定销售高性能育苗和种子的策略。该项目的短期成果将是一份商业计划，该计划基于美国西海岸贝类种子市场的可靠数据，因此适合首先由我们的贝类行业合作伙伴进行审查，最终由外部投资者进行审查。该项目的长期贡献是应用复杂的动物育种技术，以增加全球商业水产养殖的粮食产量。

Aquaculture, the fastest growing sector of global food production, now accounts for more than half of global aquatic production, having surpassed capture fisheries in 2013. Unfortunately, aquaculture relies largely on natural or hatchery propagation of wild stocks and boasts few domesticated species. This primitive exploitation of wild captives must be rectified quickly, if we are to meet seafood demand and serious challenges to the sustainability of aquaculture, such as increasing competition for coastal growing areas, adverse interactions between wild and farmed stocks, emerging diseases, ocean warming, and ocean acidification. Commercial breeding programs can help to meet these global challenges, by accelerating the development and improvement of domesticated stocks for aquaculture, while simultaneously reducing or eliminating interactions with wild populations. The Pacific oyster is one of the top global aquaculture species. Production of this species on the U.S. West Coast has already been impacted by ocean acidification and emerging diseases. Project participants recently founded a start-up shellfish breeding company, Pacific Hybreed, for the commercial development of high-performing shellfish larvae and early juveniles ("seed") to supply regional and global aquaculture markets. The I-Corps project will facilitate this start-up company to translate decades of basic biological research into secure, stable and sustainable supplies of shellfish in the face of changing climate and ocean conditions. The biological parallel between the improved yields of hybrid corn and other crops and of hybrid oysters suggests a business parallel between the development of a shellfish breeding company and the development of the modern crop seed industry, which is today a $20B international enterprise. Fuller understanding of how aquaculture species will respond to environmental change in the world's oceans requires a merging of physiological, genetic and environmental information. Over the last 15 years, this team has repeatedly demonstrated that experimental crosses of inbred lines produce hybrid vigor that is as dramatic as hybrid vigor in corn and other crops. Thus, crossbreeding is the basis for the innovation at the heart of this project; in this context, the Team?s interdisciplinary insights into the genetic, genomic, and physiological causes of hybrid vigor in the Pacific oyster promise the development of biomarkers to improve the efficiency of identifying elite lines and superior hybrid genetic material. The goal of this project is to bring these research elements to bear on commercial production of superior brood stock and high-performing shellfish larvae and early juveniles ("seed"). This I-Corps team will participate in the program's entrepreneurship training, undertake market research, and develop market strategies. The team will contact ~100 shellfish growers, mostly members of the Pacific Coast Shellfish Growers Association, to determine (1) the size and structure of the brood stock and seed markets on the U.S. West Coast, (2) the production costs associated with seed supply, (3) the types of brood stock and seed products presently available, and (4) the price structures for these products, including premiums paid for triploid vs. diploid seed. Interactions with potential customers will enable the team to develop a strategy for marketing high-performing brood stock and seed. The short-term outcome from this project will be a business plan that is based on hard numbers about the shellfish seed market along the U.S. West Coast and is therefore suitable for review, first, by our shellfish industry partners and, eventually, by outside investors. The long-term contribution of this project is the application of sophisticated animal-breeding technologies to increase food production from global commercial aquaculture.