Review of Aquaculture Genetics and Genomics.

General introduction Aquaculture production has continued to grow at an ever increasing rate from less than 1 million tonnes in the 1950s to nearly 60 million tonnes in 2004 (FAO 2006). Much of this increase occurring since the mid 1980s with the vast percentage of the production being from Asia and the Pacific rim, particularly China. The percentages by volume are China 69.7%, Rest of Asia 21.9 % and Rest of the world 8.1 % the respective values of the production are 51.2%, 29.3 % and 19.5%. The Rest of the world percentage includes Western Europe which accounts for 7.7 % of the world total aquaculture production by value. The European sector is dominated by Atlantic salmon production but, rainbow trout, mussels, oysters and marine species such as seabass and seabream also now make significant contributions. Despite the great importance of the present aquaculture production and the hope that its expansion in the future will help feed the ever growing world population very little of this production can be said to be coming from genetically managed or improved strains. Gjedrem (2005) estimated that less than 5 % of world aquaculture production come