DEVELOPMENT OF A SNP MARKER PANEL FOR PARENTAGE, DIVERSITY AND RELATEDNESS ANALYSES IN PACIFIC WHITE SHRIMP Penaeus vannamei

Pacific white shrimp (Penaeus vannamei) are the most important shrimp species in the aquaculture industry and account for more than 50% of all farmed crustaceans. Global production of P. vannamei has increased steadily over the years from 1 million tons in 2003 to over 3.5 million tons in 2014. The need to establish reliable genetic tools to assess parentage, relatedness and diversity among cultured populations is of increasing consequence to maintaining diverse, healthy stocks of P. vannamei.  We report here on the development and characterization of a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) panel for P. vannamei.  A panel of 178 SNP markers was established for use in genotyping and was validated in several cultured populations of P. vannamei.  The SNP panel, with an average genotyping success rate of ~98%, was able to provide measures of diversity, inbreeding and population structure within and among stocks.  The ability of the SNP panel to be able to assign parentage to all individuals was excellent, with an overall assignment rate of 99.99%.  This genetic resource will be a valuable tool in the management of P. vannamei breeding programs.