In the long term the POMS Resistance Breeding Levy will secure the future of ASI and by extension selective breeding for Pacific Oysters. This in turn secures the investments made over many years by federal funding agencies. Due to delays achieving unanimous stakeholder support the approval for the levy has been later than anticipated but was formally adopted and implemented from October 13, 2014. As a result of this delay ASI is not in a position to enter into some key contracts in terms of provision of services for current data sets. The most pressing of these is the provision of genetic services undertaken by CSIRO.

The support from CRC for this activity will open up an training opportunity we would like to offer. There are a number of other participants in the CRC who are initiating family breeding programs or planning to initiate these programs. This project thus presents the opportunity of conducting the analysis as a training exercise for CRC participants including key stakeholders in the oyster breeding programs to improve understanding of the process and logistics of implementing family breeding program.

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.