428 Government, academia and industry collaborations to advance selective breeding and genetic research in rainbow trout aquaculture and recreational fisheries.

Abstract Research conducted for over two decades at the USDA-ARS National Center for Cool and Cold Water Aquaculture (NCCCWA) in collaboration with industry partners, academia, and other federal and state government agencies has been focused on improving rainbow trout germplasm through selective breeding and transferring of technology, knowledge and genetic and genomic resources to stakeholders. In this presentation we will review the multifaceted research collaborations with direct impact on the aquaculture, recreational sport fishing and biotechnology industries. First we will look at the design, development, and evolution of the selective breeding program for resistance to bacterial cold-water disease (BCWD) in rainbow trout at the USDA NCCCWA, which is based on input and continuous feedback from the aquaculture industry. The improved survival performance of the ARS selectively bred line for disease resistance was demonstrated in field trials with natural disease outbreaks. We will then describe the development of genome resources and genotyping tools and products in collaboration with the Biotech industry which has a crucial role in the transfer and dissemination of the gnomic technology to the aquaculture breeding companies. Finally, we will describe the demonstration studies of genomic selection and the potential of marker assisted selection for resistance to BCWD that were conducted with industry research partners using industry broodstocks, and led to the development of commercial rainbow trout lines with improved disease resistance. We will also describe collaborative studies to evaluate the potential of genomic selection for resistance to IHNV disease and for improving fillet yield in rainbow trout. Outcomes of the collaborative research included germplasm release of the ARS line with improved resistance to BCWD to stakeholders, reference genome assemblies and 50K SNP arrays for genotyping in rainbow trout and in North American Atlantic salmon, a resource genome haplotypes reference for genotyping by imputation from low coverage whole genome re-sequencing in rainbow trout, demonstration of the improvement in accuracy of genomic-based breeding predictions for multiple traits, and the identification of major QTL for resistance to BCWD that can be used for marker assisted selection in the commercial Troutlodge lines.