Selective Breeding of Copepods

CFEED produces copepod eggs for the marine larviculture industry. Industrial copepod production is a novel business concept still in early stage, and CFEED is to date the only operational company producing copepod eggs for the marine larviculture sector worldwide. Selective breeding is a powerful tool to increase the performance of a population for desirable traits, and fecundity is a highly heritable trait in copepods which makes selective breeding a promising approach to permanently increase egg production in a population. The project "Selective Breeding of Copepods – SELCOP" will, for the first time, initiate a selective breeding program for the copepod species Acartia tonsa to improve egg production rates for the current, commercial copepod population. This will reduce labour costs and increase productivity and profitability for CFEED. Copepod production is today a highly manual operation. Automation would enable rapid production scale-up and business expansion, but it will require development and integration of unique hardware and control systems. In SELCOP, we aim to design, build and implement fully autonomous copepod production tanks in CFEEDs factory wherein the genetic gains of the selective breeding program will be evaluated in semi-commercial scale. These innovations will facilitate sustainable company growth in terms of increased production volumes and economic competitiveness, and unique technology which in turn will enable higher turnovers and more competitive pricing. In the initial phase of the project, we developed a breeding plan which applied the quantitative genetics theory to the specific case of A. tonsa and built and validated hard- and software to see through the breeding experiments. In parallel, we commenced the work on the copepod production tanks to ensure these were implemented and thoroughly tested in time for the commercial trials using the improved production broodstock. The project has succeeded with selective breeding on Acartia tonsa. A prerequisite for the success has been the self-developed technology which has been developed in the project and used for the selective breeding. The work has resulted in increasing the average daily egg production rates per female (fecundity) significantly after selective breeding, and the targeted egg production rates announced in the project description was achieved. What now remains is to evaluate the performance of selected lines of copepods in commercial settings if the effect is long lasting and remains after the selected strain has been scaled up and implemented in the semi-commercial production trials. CFEED is currently scaling-up the selected line in their production facilities. The autonomous tanks which will be used in the trials are ready, however, there is still some instrumentation remaining which is currently work in progress.

CFEED produces copepod eggs for the marine larviculture industry. An increase of per capita egg production would immediately result in increased income and company value. Selective breeding is a powerful tool to increase the performance of a population for desirable traits, and fecundity is a highly heritable trait in copepods which makes selective breeding a promising approach to permanently increase egg production in a population. By establishing a new line of highly fecund copepods through a selective breeding program, both egg production yields and resource utilization rates can be significantly improved. Such an innovation will facilitate economically sustainable company growth, enable higher turnovers and enable more competitive pricing. SELCOP will, for the first time, initiate a selective breeding program for Acartia tonsa to improve egg production rates for the current, commercial copepod population. We will develop and make use of advanced image analysis methodologies, using tailored optics and machine learning to achieve high accuracy monitoring of egg production rates in the breeding experiments. Our commercial production trials will test the improved strain to assess genetic gains in a realistic production environment. The overarching aim of the project is to bring forth an improved line of copepods with higher egg production rates and implement these in the daily operation at CFEEDs factory to increase resource utilization using autonomous production tanks innovated in SELCOP. This would reduce labour costs and increase stability and predictability in the production. The innovations will facilitate sustainable company growth in terms of increased production volumes and economic competitiveness, and unique, patentable technology which in turn will enable higher turnovers and more competitive pricing. With SELCOP, CFEED will take key steps towards manifesting the company's share in the global aquaculture markets for marine fish and shrimp species.