The meeting will be held on June 21st-27th, 2015
The location will be at the Assembly Hall of the Faculty of Law, Campus Sur, Santiago de Compostela University, Galicia, Spain.
IAGA and ISGA
The International Association for Genetics in Aquaculture (IAGA) was constituted in the 1985 Symposium Genetics in Aquaculture II, in Davis, with the purpose of promoting communication and constructive service to its members concerning all aspects of genetics of aquatic species relevant to aquaculture; to provide a mechanism for holding a triennial meeting known as the International Symposium on Genetics in Aquaculture (ISGA); and to ensure publication of the proceedings of each symposium.
An increasing number of genetically improved aquaculture species are now commercially available throughout the world. Aquaculture activity has increased dramatically since the early 1980s, and it will become more important as demand for seafood products increases, world harvest by capture fisheries reaches a plateau or declines, and human population increases.
With this increasing level of demand for aquaculture foods, there is a need for more efficient production systems. Major improvements have been achieved through enhanced husbandry procedures, improved nutrition, enhanced disease diagnosis and therapies and the application of genetics to breeding programs. Although several aquaculture species have been greatly improved through the application of genetics, much greater progress can be accomplished. Genetic research and its application has a significant role in the development of aquaculture, and this role and impact will become more important as aquaculture develops further. Genetically improved fish developed through selection, intraspecific crossbreeding, interspecific hybridization, polyploidy, sex reversal (genetically monosex), and marker assisted selection, are now being commercially applied for various species throughout the world. As space for aquaculture becomes more limited, the necessity for more efficient production will further increase the importance of genetic improvement of aquaculture species. The combination of a variety of genetic improvement programs – traditional, biotechnological, genomic and genetic engineering – is likely to result in the best genotypes for aquaculture in the future.
Aquaculture genomics has made great strides in the past 20 years, and significant genomic tools are available to apply to genetic improvement programs. With the lowering costs of sequencing and novel assemblage algorithms, the genome and transcriptome resources have greatly increased in many aquaculture species, especially in fish, but also in mollusks and crustaceans. Starting from EST databases, several microarrays have been constructed to study gene expression profiles, and more recently, highly resolutive RNAseq data have been obtained in some aquaculture species. Large amount of genetic markers have been developed starting from genomic and transcriptomic databases that have been used to construct integrated genetic maps, and progress has been made for QTL mapping. Finally, the largely covered genomes and transcriptomes of several model fish species have been widely used for comparative mapping and gene mining to identify candidate genes.
Although, the effort applied to developing aquaculture genomic resources should be increased, the time is right to take advantage of the vast effort that has been invested in genomics and to integrate genomics information and derived strategies in breeding programs. Marker assisted selection has begun to be implemented effectively in some breeding programs related to resistance to pathologies, growth or for controlling sex ratios. Also, the assessment of the benefits of genomic selection for specific characters with low heritability and/or difficult to measure in the selected broods has begun in those species with the highest genomic resources.
Finally, attention should be paid to the potential risks of progress in aquaculture and its potential impact on wild populations. There is an increasing concern regarding on the impact of escapees from aquaculture facilities that not only can directly threaten natural populations and the fisheries of the cultured species, but may also produce severe unbalances in natural ecosystems with unpredictable consequences. An effort should be made to move towards the best sustainable aquaculture systems, and for this, genetics can provide tools both for avoiding potential impact as well as for monitoring escapees and introgression in wild populations.
The ISGA XII will provide a suitable forum to exchange information to accelerate genetic improvement through traditional genetics, biotechnology, applied genomics and through the integration of these areas work towards a better sustainable aquaculture.
The objectives of the conference for the international community of aquaculture geneticists and genomicists:
- To present and share the latest research on aquaculture genetics and applied genomics for genetic enhancement of farmed fish, shellfish and crustaceans.
- To discuss the best strategies for integrating genomic resources of aquaculture species to facilitate their availability for researches and companies working in this area.
- To provide information in a flexible format to aquaculture researchers on the new tools for developing genomic resources and their exploitation, as well as for the new approaches in functional genomics and whole genome sequencing.
- To provide a forum for aquaculture geneticists to learn from leaders in terrestrial animal research about the latest developments on integrating breeding, genetics and genomics for improving performance.
- To link the past, present and future of aquaculture genetics.
Sessions will include
- Quantitative Genetics, Selective Breeding.
- Biotechnology (Polyploidy, Sex Reversal, Genetic Stem Cell Applications, Transgenics).
- Genetic architecture of relevant traits for aquaculture.
- Applied Genomics (Marker Assisted Selection and Genomic Selection).
- Ethics, Food Safety and Environmental Risks.