World Aquaculture 2023

May 29 - June 1, 2023

Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia

EMPLOYMENT OF 3D PRINTING TECHNOLOGY IN CRYOBANKING OF CORAL LARVAE

Kanokpron Loeslakwiboon, Wen-Chung Hsieh, Sujune Tsai, Chiahsin Lin*

 

Graduate Institute of Marine Biology, National Dong Hwa University, Pingtung, Taiwan

 National Museum of Marine Biology and Aquarium, Pingtung, Taiwan

chiahsin@nmmba.gov.tw / chiahsin@gms.ndhu.edu.tw

 



Coral reefs are highly diverse and an important ecosystem for marine organisms; unfortunately, they are threatened by climate change. Therefore, this study was focused on long-term cryobank coral larvae with the use of 3D printing assisted technology. Herein, we developed a Cryojig device and vitrification cryotop that consists of a finely thin (120µ) laminated acetate film (sheet; 0.1 cm W x 2.6 cm L) attached to a hollow plastic stick (7.8 cm L) with an absolute length of 10.4 cm utilizing 3D printing technology. The laser hitting accuracies were examined at three different speeds (low: 668 mm/s, medium: 834 mm/s and high: 1113 mm/s) at 300 volts to assess the efficiency of the 3D printed device. In this study, the results showed the highest hitting accuracy of more than 95 % with a vitrification rate of over 61%. In addition, the 3D printed device achieved to long-term cryobank of total over a thousand coral larvae including Seriatopora caliendrum and Pocillopora verrucosa using a vitrification solution of 2M ethylene glycol + 1M propylene glycol while 2M ethylene glycol + 1M glycerol was used for Pocillopora acuta combined with 40% (w/v) Ficoll and 1.2 x 1018 gold nanoparticles. Future efforts to cryogenically preserve and bank corals might greatly benefit from this study that makes application of 3D printing technology.