AQUA-FAANG

Research Directions:

Fish nutrition and feeding

Functional and Comparative genomics

Description:

The overall objective of AQUA-FAANG is to generate genome-wide functional annotation maps for the six commercially most important fish species within European aquaculture and exploit their contribution to variation in traits of commercial relevance, focusing on improved resistance to disease. The project brings together world-leading expertise from academia and industry in a coordinated initiative to significantly improve our understanding of genome functions and prediction of phenotype from genotype. The project outputs will pave the way for precision breeding (defined here as the applied use of technologies that enable targeted and sustainable genetic improvement in traits of economic and welfare importance) to improve disease resistance and other commercial traits in aquaculture. In turn, this will promote sustainability and competitiveness in European fish aquaculture and contribute to cross-national food security. The experimental, bioinformatic and comparative approaches developed will be translated to accelerate genome annotation in other species of importance for global aquaculture, aided by a core emphasis on sharing and standardization of data, protocols and expertise