This project offers significant opportunity to accelerate the Australian Pacific Oyster industry to grow in production and value.

The NSW Pacific Oyster producers, especially those in POMS affect areas require both POMS resistant oysters that have all the benefits demonstrated through the ASI breeding program, and due to local regulatory requirements, and ease of management - triploid Pacific Oysters. Triploid oysters have an additional set of chromosomes (Triploid 3n vs Diploid 2n), and this provides for increased growth and better condition for extended periods compared with diploids that lose condition through reproductive activities including spawning. Triploid oysters are an important part of the broader Australian Industry, with producers incorporating them in production to ensure year round supply, especially in warmer climates such as NSW and SA where reproductive activity is enhanced.

Utilising the framework for research and development outlined below:

i) Proof of concept
ii) Proof of product
iii) Proof of markets
iv) Commercialisation

This project builds upon the the proof of concept that ASI selectively breed lines have enhanced resilience to POMS, this project addresses the second stage - Proof of product, delivering ASI breeding into a triploid product.

The introduction of POMS to Tasmania has resulted in an increased requirement for POMS resistant oysters nationally. The Tasmanian industry has an urgent requirement to allow the industry to rebuild towards sustainability for those areas currently affected by the disease and for protection for those areas which are currently free from it. The South Australian industry, whist free from the disease at this point, also requires POMS resistant oysters so that it can hopefully avoid the crippling losses suffered in Tasmania by having resistant oysters stocked onto their farms prior to any potential outbreaks. New South Wales like Tasmania has areas that have been affected and areas that are free from POMS. Biosecurity restrictions as a result of POMS incursions have added an extra layer of complexity to ensuring that the benefits of the selective breeding program are achieved nationally. As a result there is a requirement for further research to adapt the breeding program to the new paradigm of POMS in Tasmania and permit the industry to recover and be protected from the threat of further expansion of POMS into new areas.

This project is designed to define oyster ‘condition’ and to review the techniques available for its assessment as a precursor to projects in the areas of genetics, market/supply chain and food safety.

Based on industry input, SOCo, ASI and the Oyster Consortium place oyster ‘condition’ as the highest priority for genetic research.

ASI and SOCo in conjunction with NSW DPI and the CSIRO Food Futures Flagship, intend to submit a CRC proposal entitled “Incorporation of selection for condition/survival into a breeding strategy for Sydney rock oysters and Pacific oysters.” The aspects of ‘condition’ of significance are:
a) Physiological and reproductive condition
b) Marketability

Before the detailed research proposal can be developed it is necessary to:
* determine the defining characteristics of marketability (such as meat weight, meat-shell ratio, meat colour, glycogen levels and/or lipid levels, gonadal development) and
* consider the techniques best suited to measuring the characteristics of significance.

This project will also aid other CRC projects to achieve their objectives: “Protecting the Safety and Quality of Australian Oysters using Predictive Models Integrated with ‘Intelligent’ Cold Chain Technologies” and, if the project is supported, “Quality, shelf-life and value-adding of Australian oysters.”

Oyster growers, marketers and end point users, as well as geneticists, oyster breeding groups, biologists and technologists need to be involved in discussion to focus aims of both proposed and current research.