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Genetic Traceability Of Wild And Cultured Populations Of Gilt-head Sea

Bream (Sparus aurata) Using SNPs

Markella Moraitou*1, Konstantinos Gagavouzis1, Nikoletta Karaiskou1, Alexandros

Triantafyllidis1
1
School of Biology, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece

*markellam@bio.auth.gr

Keywords: genomics, population genetics, aquaculture

The gilthead sea bream (Sparus aurata) is among the most economically important fish in the
Mediterranean. The majority of its European production derives from aquaculture farming,
making it the cultured species with the 3rd biggest economic value in the EU (in 2015). EU is
the biggest producer of gilthead sea bream worldwide, with Greece being the leading country,
accounting for almost 60% of EU production. This increased production has caused an increased
concern regarding farmed fish escaping into the natural environment and the potential genetic
and ecological consequences on local wild populations. On the other hand, farmed fish is
occasionally marketed as wild, either on purpose (fraud) or unwillingly (as a result of farm
escapes). According to EU legislation, member states should ensure that information such as the
production method can be traced in all marketing stages of fish products. This called for a cheap,
fast, but also accurate method of traceability. In this study, we used a Single Nucleotide
Polymorphism (SNP) assay that was developed during the EU AquaTrace project in order to test
the origins of sea bream samples from Greece, some provided by aquaculture facilities and
others caught in the sea. This technique makes use of the KASP chemistry in order to genotype
15 informative SNP loci using specialized primers-probes for each allele, providing an accurate
and fast method to trace the origins of a sea bream individual back to either a cultured or wild
population.

21st Symposium of Biology Students in Europe Croatia 2018