NIFS announced that it set out the R&D on technology for smart breeding of pacific oyster, which is one of the four key cultured seafoods including laver, flounder, abalone, and pacific oyster, aimed at developing high-value added varieties. 

NIFS plans to engineer a dramatic improvement in the level of breeding technology by applying the smart breeding technology- accumulated through olive flounder breeding- and genomic analysis techniques to the R&D from the beginning.  

Especially, NIFS will take this year to spur the development of oyster varieties by improving the main traits such as growth speed, environmental resistance, etc., while securing infrastructure for the digital information including Korean reference genome for the pacific oyster and producing the seeds by family line. 

The pacific oyster accounts for the largest portion of the yields of shellfish cultured in South Korea, but environmental changes including climate change is causing the yields to stagnate.

In particular, the limit of growth due to the recessive gene and mass mortality occurrence repeated every year require immediate solutions. In addition, scientific and systematic development of customized varieties are urgent under more demands for the fast growing and HWT-resistant pacific oyster.

*Pacific oyster yields: 285,000 tons(2012)→ 265,000 tons(2015)→ 303,000 tons(2018)→ 306,000 tons(2021)→ 310,000 tons(2024)