Investigation of morphological predictors of fillet and carcass yield in European sea bass ( Dicentrarchus labrax ) for application in selective breeding

Abstract

Genetic parameters for carcass and fillet percentage were estimated in 760 European sea bass reared under commercial conditions and slaughtered at 573 days post fertilization (395 g mean body weight). Phenotyped fish were the offspring of 45 sires and 20 dams crossed in a factorial mating design. Pedigrees were reconstructed with 90.7% success using 12 microsatellites. The heritability of fillet yield was moderately low (0.21), while it was high for carcass yield (0.57). Both traits were poorly correlated (− 0.01 to 0.28) making space for their combined improvement. We investigated different predictors derived from measurement of surfaces on digital pictures and ultrasound measurements at several points of the body. The accuracy of the phenotypic prediction was rather low for fillet yield (r2 = 0.02-0.18), but higher for carcass yield (r2 = 0.27-0.41). However, genetic correlations of predictors with the traits to predict were reasonably high (up to 0.67 for fillet yield and 0.95 for carcass yield), thus allowing to consider them for performing indirect individual selection instead of sib selection. However, it was difficult to design a predictor that would simultaneously increase fillet yield and carcass yield because of contradicting effects of relative head size, an important component of the predictors which was positively correlated to carcass yield but not to fillet yield. Highlights ► We investigated morphological predictors and heritability of fillet and carcass yields in European sea bass. ► Fillet and carcass yield were heritable, but uncorrelated. ► It was not possible to find unequivocal morphological predictors applicable to both fillet and carcass.

First Evidence of Realized Selection Response on Fillet Yield in Rainbow Trout Oncorhynchus mykiss, Using Sib Selection or Based on Correlated Ultrasound Measurements

“…When rHGCW is only indirectly selected through E8/ E23 in the E8/E23+ and E8/E23− groups, the effect on BW is more limited, as can be seen in Table 5. In this case, rather than using a simple residual, it may be better to use the log-residual of HGCW, which would suppress this scale effect, as was suggested in other cases (Egset et al, 2012;Vandeputte et al, 2017). Additionally, indirect selection for BW also caused a tendency for a higher weight in the offspring of down-selected parents (1,522 g in Sel− vs. 1,484 g in Sel+, P = 0.051).…”

“…(fillet thickness accessed with ultrasound imagery, Bosworth et al, 2001) took place quite a long time ago, and were followed by evaluations of the genetic correlations of such predictors with fillet yield (Rutten et al, 2005;Kause et al, 2007;Kocour et al, 2007;Haffray et al, 2013;Vandeputte et al, 2017). In these papers, the general conclusion was that several predictors (general shape analysis, head size, ultrasound measurements) were (genetically) correlated with fillet yield and could be used to improve it by indirect individual selection in a breeding program.…”

“…However, no selection response data were available until the present study to demonstrate the practical applicability of such predictors. It has to be noted that in many cases, the predictors are complex linear combinations of external and/or internal morphological characteristics (Sang et al, 2009;Haffray et al, 2013;Vandeputte et al, 2017). This may raise issues concerning their application in batches or populations other than the one they have been established in.…”

A Comparative Evaluation of Carcass Quality, Nutritional Value, and Consumer Preference of Oreochromis niloticus from Two Impoundments with Different Pollution Levels in Zimbabwe

“…The variability of fillet weight while dressing-out percentage was not different could be attributed to differences in diet, fish age, sex, season of capture, and environmental conditions and to some extent techniques of filleting [40]. A higher fillet percentage from the fish is desirable since it leads to a higher yield of edible portions and subsequent reduction in the quantity of processing waste [41]. …”

The Phenotype Expression, Taxa Level and Traits Configuration of Moluccas Ring Cowrie, Cypraea Annulus (Gastropod: Cypraeidae) Based on Morphometric Traits data

“…Knowledge and understanding of PEM, MTL, and MTC between subpopulations contributed to monitoring and evaluation of biota performance among subpopulations [8,52,55], monitoring and evaluation of environmental and aquacultural systems, selection and hybridization programs in aquaculture [1,2,[56][57][58], evaluating biota conditions and harvest planning even in determining the quality or selling price of aquaculture biota [59][60][61]. The activities of determining the performance and factors of the biota condition of aquaculture, monitoring and evaluation of aquaculture system, selection and hybridization programs had done, but there were still problems i.e expensive, difficult, subjective, qualitative, long time, and only a few traits [59,20,62,63].…”