Maternal and cage effects on genetic parameter estimation for Pacific white shrimp Penaeus vannamei Boone

Three sets of full-sib families of Pacific white shrimp Penaeus vannamei Boone, produced from females in different reproductive condition (15, 45 and 75 days after ablation and start of production), were used to estimate heritabilities and genetic correlations of growth traits for several larval and grow-out stages of development. Heritabilities for early larval length (nauplii) were larger when estimated from families produced 45 and 75 days after ablation than when estimated from families produced 15 days after ablation, indicating a maternal effect caused by lower reproductive quality of the females used to produce the second and third sets. However, the better reproductive quality of females used to produce the first set resulted in significant density effects on larval length, presumably caused by different mortalities occurring among families during larval culture, which also resulted in an increase in the heritability values estimated for late post-larvae stages. After transfer to grow-out cages in a pond, all estimated heritabilities decreased initially, then increased again. The increase in heritabilities was associated with a negative correlation between growth and density in the cages at 58 days. Lowering densities at this age resulted in a decrease in heritability values at 97 days, but an increase again thereafter. The largest genetic correlation with abdominal weight, the trait of most interest for improvement in shrimp, was total weight. That was followed by cephalothorax weight, width of first abdominal segment, abdominal length and total length. Among these, the trait with a consistently large heritability at 58 and 97 days, and with a large genetic correlation with abdominal weight, was width of first abdominal segment. This trait might provide a secondary or indirect trait to improve abdominal weight when combined with total weight for a selection programme.