BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS
BIG LEAP
Salmon breeding performance for one company has vastly improved with help from the University’s Roslin Institute
A relationship that began eight years ago, between the University’s Roslin Institute and a salmon breeding company, has developed into a strategic partnership that has enabled the company to sustainably improve the health, welfare and performance in their modern selective breeding of farmed salmon.
Landcatch Natural Selection Ltd (LNS) is a Scottish international salmon breeding company that supplies genetically improved Atlantic salmon stock (through selective breeding) to farmers in the form of eggs or smolts (young fish). They currently produce up to 60 million salmon eggs per year. In June 2011, LNS was purchased by Hendrix Genetics, an international multi-species breeding company, to further develop the genetics of salmon and other species used in commercial aquaculture. One of LNS’s major challenges has been in generating Atlantic salmon that are resistant to Infectious Pancreatic Necrosis (IPN). IPN is a viral disease that can cause mortality to young salmon during specific windows of both the freshwater and seawater stages of their lifecycle. One severe outbreak can wipe out up to 80 per cent of salmon stocks on a farm. Due to the fact that the farmers were experiencing major mortality events from IPN, the goal for LNS was to provide stock with demonstrable resistance to the disease. An additional challenge was to develop a predictive genetic marker test for IPN resistance which could be applied
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Dr Ross Houston is investigating Atlantic salmon’s resistance to infectious diseases
“The experiments required to achieve these results would not have been possible without both industry and academic resources”
to select the most resistant stock. The use of genetic marker tests had not previously been applied in aquaculture.
In 2003, the company engaged Professors Steve Bishop and John Woolliams at the Roslin Institute to supervise an industrial studentship to examine whether the resistance or susceptibility of salmon to IPN is under genetic control. Since then, the relationship between the company and the University’s Roslin Institute has developed into a long-term partnership that has taken in two collaborative research and development grants funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and a Knowledge Transfer Partnership. Other collaborators have
IMAGE © NORRIE RUSSELL, ROSLIN INSTITUTE
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