NIFS announced that it secured the foundation for selective breeding* to develop whiteleg shrimp strongly tolerant to AHPND** which causes mass mortality of whiteleg shrimp.

*AHPND (Acute Hepatopancreatic Necrosis Disease): AHPND is a bacterial disease that has caused mass mortalities in farmed population of whiteleg shrimp. Major clinical signs involve shrimp hepatopancreas: significant astrophy, loss of color, and presence of black spots or streaks due to melanised tubules. In particular, it is deadly to young shrimp.

**Selective breeding: Selective breeding is the systematic breeding of animals in order to reach the target traits (such as fast growth, disease tolerance, high water temperature tolerance, etc.) through repeated mating and selection. 

The production volume of farmed shrimp in South Korea continued to increase, but it stagnated since 2020s at the level of 10,000 tons and even decreased to 7,000 tons (27% level to the one of 2022) in 2023 because of the AHPND occurrence.

*Production volume(tons): (’20) 8,124 → (’21) 9,545 → (’22) 9,504 → (’23) 6,996 

In this situation, the West Sea Fisheries Research Institute of NIFS secured the whiteleg shrimp – which survived at the site where the bacterial (or infectious) diseases occurred last year – as parent, produced the seeds, and examined the viability of the seeds by artificially infecting them with pathogenic bacteria to verify their disease tolerance. 

The result showed that the mortality rate during the time when seeds are young (0.5~1g), the seeds developed by the institute was only 4%, whereas the control had 98% mortality rate during the time. 

This research demonstrated the possibility to develop whiteleg shrimp having strong tolerance for bacterial disease for the first time in Korea, and is expected to contribute to selective breeding research on the development of Korean shrimp seeds.