Grant: Engage Grants Program

Atlantic salmon aquaculture is a flourishing and valuable industry in Canada and worldwide. Successful aquaculture depends upon detailed biological knowledge of early life stages in fish with the ultimate goal of producing high quality, robust juveniles that will perform well later in life. Despite this, there is a surprising lack of basic knowledge on the biological processes important for larval development and performance. Temperature is a key regulator of metabolism and growth and has profound effects on oxygen solubility; thus, an understanding of the physiology of embryos/larvae under variable incubation temperatures is critical. It is also important to determine if the rearing temperatures/conditions are stressful in these early life stages. To date, there is little knowledge on how the physical environment influences egg and larval metabolic and stress physiology. AquaBounty has developed the AquAdvantage Atlantic salmon containing a growth hormone (GH) transgene with the potential to grow to market size in half the time of conventional salmon. The company has a keen interest in how temperature impacts the timing of hatching and the quality and performance of the larvae with an end goal of using incubation temperature (i.e. chilling) to extend the availability of salmon eggs. Given that eggs are often shipped at one temperature and arrive at their destination at another, often warmer temperature, AquaBounty is would also like to identify the potential physiological effects of acute temperature increase on egg/larvae quality and performance. The objective of this proposal is to determine the physiological effects of egg incubation temperature on non-transgenic and transgenic Atlantic salmon eggs and larvae. This information is essential for commercialization in terms of the conditions under which eggs are shipped and the physical environment at their destination.