Abstract: The ivory snail, Babylonia areolata, is dioecious mollusk that is mainly distributed across tropical and subtropical coastal areas in Southeast and East Asia, which is considered as a recently emerging maricultured species. In recent years, the aquaculture area is expanded gradually, with annual economic benefit of nearly half billion US Dollar. However, because of intensive breeding and the breeding environment was worsened, leading to the high mortality, thus causing great economic losses. In 2011, our group launched the project on genetic breeding of B. areolata. This research analyzed and compared the protogenesis traits of several geographic populations of B. areolata on the basis of growth and survival, and carried out mass selection, pedigree selection and crossbreeding. The selective response and realized heritability of four successive generations were conducted through mass selection. Microsatellite was used to evaluate the genetic variation level of these populations after successive selection. The hybridization effect of B. areolata by taking two populations were also analyzed with diallel crossing method, while the interaction effect between four genotypic groups and the environment were conducted at the same time. The new strain “Haitai I” was conferred for “New Variety Certificate” by Ministry of Agriculture in 2019, which displayed better growth trait and stronger stress resistance. This project would be better to solve the problems occurred during breeding process at present, and make B. areolata industry achieve better development.
Key words: Ivory snail, mass selection, hybridization, growth