Genetic resistance to sea lice

Offentlig prosjektsammendrag

Sealice infestation of Atlantic salmon is a major problem for the industry both for the production costs of treating sealice infection and because of the welfare and environmental consequences from such outbreaks. A previous project (279208) investigated the genetic variation for sealice resistance both in a seasite 'natural' infection and in tank challenges. This project also compared both these challenges to find correlations between the two and to determine which is more successful. This project will seek to benchmark fish from parents selected for sealice resistance against those not selected in order to determine how much improvement in this trait can be achieved each generation. This information is important in order to compare the strategy of genetic selection against sealice with other strategies (mechanical removal, clearner fish, bath treatments..). This project will also further investigate the differences at the genome level between fish more resistant to lice against those more susceptible with the aim of finding genetic variants or QTLs having a significant effect on resistance. For this purpose we will use a full family challenge with all nucleus families represented