DEVELOPMENT OF GENOMIC RESOURCES TO AID U.S. COMMERCIAL ABALONE PRODUCTION AND RESTORATION CULTURE

Commercial abalone production has greatly expanded over the past decade to become a thriving global industry due to high market value and demand. In the U.S., most commercial production operates in California utilizing three native west coast species: red abalone (Haliotis rufescens), green abalone (H. fulgens), and pink abalone (H. corrugata).  Abalone are one of the few groups of species where culture production dominates the commercial market as a result of increasing demand and declining natural stocks. This decline in wild populations due to overexploitation and disease have even led to two U.S. abalone species, the white and black abalone, being placed on the endangered species list.  While genomic resources have greatly improved production for most livestock, agriculture, and aquaculture species (where developed), few genomic resources exist for the west coast abalone species. These species differ in commercially important traits that are key to culture expansion in California and improved production efficiency (e.g., growth rate, disease resistance, thermal tolerance). Restoration culture for white and black abalone could also be improved by development of these resources, for example, by evaluating genomic diversity and culture-biased selection to guide breeding and outplanting decisions. To help advance aquaculture practices for the U.S. abalone industry, we are in the process of developing a genomic toolkit for these six abalone species. This included generating a high-quality de novo genome assembly for red abalone (H. rufescens), and conducting resequencing of five other abalone species native to the U.S. west coast: green (H. fulgens), pink (H. corrugata), pinto (H. kamtschatkana), black (H. cracherodii), and white (H. sorenseni) abalone. Additional sequencing on cultured and wild white abalone was conducted to investigate signals of culture-driven selection. Results, to date, on these projects will be presented.