Domestication and reproduction in fish

Abstract

Diversification of the seafood market requires to attempt the domestication of new fish species. Reproduction control is more or less advanced depending on farming intensification level. In view of rationalizing methods for the domestication of new species, three questions are discussed : To what extent the reproduction of the species currently farmed is actually controlled ? How to extrapolate the knowledge from a well-known species to another ? What are the main reproductive features to consider when trying to domesticate new species ?

First, the extent of artificially controlled reproduction varies greatly with species. This may be due to more or less advanced biological knowledge, availability of juveniles from the wild, and economical and technical choices.

The second question is dealing with the elaboration, the choice, and the use of species classifications based on genetics characters or on phenotypes. Genetics and genomics data banks are developing but need to be connected with data banks describing judicious reproductive characteristics. The development of relevant typologies for these characteristics and the availability of adequate bioinformatics tools would be useful.

The third point of discussion is focusing on a limited number of teleostean reproductive features into which it could be worth to go further in a zootechnical prospect.