State of culture and breeding of Europeansea bass, Dicentrarchus labrax L.

• Main Authors: Felip, Alicia, Piferrer, Francesc
• Language: English
• Published: 2018
• Subjects: Northeast Atlantic
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10261/193843

The European sea bass is a marine teleost valued by consumers due to its high quality as a table fish. It is distributed in the Northeast Atlantic, Mediterranean and Black Sea. Capture fisheries is more or less stable around 9, 000 tons a year. The European sea bass full life cycle was closed in the 1970s, favored in part for its ability to naturally spawn pelagic eggs in captivity. This, along with research in aspects of its physiology, has helped aquaculture development. Thus, production has grown firmly since the 1980s, reaching 157,516 tons in 2014. The main producers are Turkey, Greece, Spain, Egypt, Italy and France. Temperature and photoperiod are the two main environmental cues that regulate the reproductive cycle and thus through the control of these factors it is possible to obtain fertilized eggs all year round. In some wild fish are used periodically to renew the broodstock. However, several selection programs are currently underway, and mainly aimed to increase production yields through selection for faster growth or better food conversion efficiency. Resistance to diseases is another important target for selection. Some reproduction-related problems persist, namely, the fact that under culture conditions most fish develop as males, which naturally mature before–some of them precociously–and grow less than females. Thus, there is also interest in the production of stocks with the highest possible proportion of females. This is not straightforward in the European sea bass because of its polygenic sex determination system, which so far has hampered the development of reliable sex-linked markers to aid in broodstock management and selection programs. Nevertheless, it has become one of the richest species in terms of genomic resources. This suggests a promising future for the development of science-based knowledge of practical applications aimed at further increasing production. Accordingly, the goal in this chapter is to provide a summary of relevant aspects with practical information on the breeding and culture of this economically important species Peer Reviewed