RECENT STATUS AND ADVANCES ON AQUACULTURE AND GENETIC BREEDING ON IVORY SHELL Babylonia areolata IN CHINA

The ivory shell, Babylonia areolata, is dioecious mollusk that is mainly distributed across tropical and subtropical coastal areas in Southeast and East Asia. It is also considered as a recently emerging maricultured species. In recent ten years, the aquaculture area is expanded gradually, while the aquaculture area singly in Hainan Province had reached 600,000 square meters in 2014 according to the statistics, with annual economic benefit of nearly 350 million RMB. 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 inheritance and selection research of B. areolata.

This research analyzed and compared the protogenesis traits of two geographic populations of B. areolata on the basis of growth and survival data of 12 months' age and taking B. lutosa as control group, and carried out mass selection, pedigree selection and crossbreeding on the basis of it. This study analyzes the selective response and realized heritability of three successive generations of B. areolata through mass selection; it analyzes and compares the difference of important quantitative traits between Hainan population and Thailand population, and applies microsatellite to evaluate the genetic variation level of these two populations after successive selection; it evaluates the genetic parameters of important economic traits of B. areolata with pedigree selection method; it researches the hybridization effect of B. areolata by taking two populations as materials and with diallel crossing method, and evaluates the interaction effect between four genotypic groups and the environment at the same time.

The new strains which had better growth trait and stronger stress resistance have obtained through the breeding project. These research would be better to solve the problems occurred during breeding process at present, and make B. areolata industry achieve better development.