Global food resource mainly involves land animals and plants, and aquatic organisms are often ignored. However, aquatic organisms provide many proteins and microelements for food security. In addition to freshwater food, marine organism resources nourish 800 million people worldwide. Marine food mainly includes fish, shrimp, Mollusk, algae, etc.
Mollusk has many species and a high marine industry yield, providing many good blue proteins for human life. Furthermore, Mollusk farming is a globally important industry based primarily around the oyster, scallop, abalone, mussel, etc., for which a common technique is elevated culture on racks, trestles, and other structures. Moreover, genetic improvement is imperative to achieve sustainable, high-quality, high-yield shellfish species through selective breeding, hybridization, polyploid breeding, molecular-assisted breeding, gene editing, and breeding. Therefore, this Research Topic is beneficial and essential in marine science. However, compared to terrestrial farm animals, the domestication and selective breeding history are relatively short in aquatic animals, and most knowledge originates from livestock genetics.
This research topic wishes to discuss selective breeding and selective breeding varieties, intraspecific crosses and hybrid varieties, interspecific crosses and hybrid varieties, polyploid breeding and polyploid varieties, female reproduction in genetic breeding biotechnology, male reproduction, and breeding varieties. Currently, most research interests focus on gene introduction, gene editing and cell engineering breeding, and classical breeding methods. Our goal is to obtain practical information on genetic improvement through combining traditional breeding methods and discovering surrogate molecular breeding techniques in Mollusk.
This Research Topic aims to discuss all aspects of shellfish research, including aquaculture, biology, phenotypic omics, ecology, management, etc. This theme targets individuals interested in basic research, commercial production, genetic resource management, germplasm innovation, etc. Original Research, Review, and Mini Review are welcomed.
This Research Topic is the second volume of the Research Topic "Mollusk Breeding and Genetic Improvement", which can be found
here.