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.

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.