Potential of Genome Editing to Improve Aquaculture Breeding and Production

Aquaculture is the fastest growing food production sector, rapidly becoming the primary source of seafood for human diets.

• Selective breeding programs are improving traits like disease resistance, but progress is limited by trait heritability and species generation interval.
• New breeding technologies, such as genome editing with CRISPR/Cas9, may expedite genetic improvements in aquaculture.
• Genome editing can quickly introduce beneficial changes to an organism's genetic makeup, including fixing existing alleles or creating new ones.
• Most aquaculture species have high fecundity and external fertilization, which could enhance the scalability of genome editing compared to terrestrial animals.

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