Aquaculture, considered a strategic area of national interest, can greatly benefit from the recent advances in molecular biology and biotechnology. Interestingly and importantly, molecular biology technologies can be applied in aquaculture toward the diagnosis of disease, in vaccine design, in the control of growth and reproduction, and in increasing disease resistance of cultivated species. Moreover the availability of genetic maps of the appropiate density is of high interest for the identification of genomic regions with characters of interest in production by means of marker-assisted selection programs. Furthermore, some of the cultivated animal or plant species could be used as biofactories for the production of molecules of interest related to Human and Animal Health.
It is important to stress that Spain is still in a position to make significant contributions to Aquatic Biotechnology because, among other reasons, this is still an emergent area of investigation in other advanced nations (e.g. USA, Canada and Norway). In addition, a highly important factor is that in Spain there are several leading research groups working in biotechnology applied to Aquaculture which have strong ties to other leading international research groups and which must be encompassed under a broader and more ambicious framework in order to potentiate their productivity and to create scientifically strong and competitive cores.
The global objective is to potentiate the development of Biotechnology and Genomics in the field of Aquaculture and more specifically in the study of the molecular basis of fundamental aspects including pathogens, growth, nutrition and reproduction without forgetting stress and genetic improvement. Therefore optimizing scientific resources by reinforcing and generating a higher degree of collaboration between research teams and/or the creation of multidisciplinary groups thereby avoiding the dispersion of scientific and economic effort.
