Estimation of heritabilities of disease resistance to Edwardsiella tarda and genetic correlations between resistance and growth traits in Chinese tongue sole (Cynoglossus semilaevis)

Abstract

Chinese tongue sole (Cynoglossus semilaevis) is an important marine flatfish which is widely cultured in coastal areas in China. Infectious bacterial diseases such as Edwardsiella tarda imposed serious threats to this species. A potential strategy to prevent this disease is to select resistance strains. The aim of the present work was to estimate the genetic variation of disease resistance to E. tarda and to evaluate the genetic correlations between resistance traits and growth traits. Three types of models were fitted by using different trait definitions (binary, continuous and categorical). After a 9-day challenge test, the overall survival was 75.4% (ranging from 6.4% to 100% in families), and at test day 6, the overall survival was 50.7%. We set test day 6 and 9 as cut-off point times respectively. The heritabilities of survival traits were ranging from 0.10 to 0.36. Considerably higher heritability values were obtained at day 6 than at day 9, regardless of which model or trait definition used (except Trait 2 in LIN). The genetic correlations between disease resistance traits and growth traits (i.e. body weight and total length) were low and not significant from zero (−0.12–0.24). There is a substantial re-ranking of families when defined resistance as categorical and continuous traits compared to binary trait. These results confirm the existence of genetic variation for resistance against E. tarda and weak genetic correlations indicate that joint genetic improvement of E. tarda resistance and growth is scarcely available.

Keywords

• Heritability
• Genetic parameter
• Disease resistance
• Genetic correlation
• Edwardsiella tarda
• Cynoglossus semilaevis