2011/754 Development of finfish aquaculture in Western Australia (WA): Removal of barriers to profitable production

By Gavin Partridge

This project comprised three sub-projects aimed at removing some key barriers and optimising some key inputs to Yellowtail Kingfish (YTK) production and improving the commercial viability of the development of a larger scale industry in WA. This report focuses on the genetics and larviculture sub-projects.

The genetics sub-project aimed to analyse genetic variation and pedigrees in existing broodstock; and to investigate options for how to best capture, maintain and effectively utilise genetic variation among cultured YTK inWA As a result of this project, the WA industry has a clear understanding of the relatedness of their limited F1 broodstock pool and a management tool and mating strategy to avoid inbreeding amongst these fish.

The larviculture sub-project compared some key differences and performances of larvae under different dietary regimes. Biochemical analyses demonstrating some key differences in the nutritional profiles of live foods enriched on different products demonstrated that the current industry standard diet Spresso is the best choice of the diets investigated, particularly in terms of its total and phospholipid profile. They also found that high taurine concentrations may be detrimental to the survival of YTK larvae and identified potential interactive effects between diet type, dose rate and enrichment time on live feed taurine levels that require further investigation.