Biotechnological innovation in genetic breeding and sustainable green development in Chinese aquaculture

Since the People’s Republic of China was founded in 1949, Chinese aquaculture production has been increasing during the past 70 years, thanks to policy guidance, market opening, and scientific and technological advances. Along with rapid development of biotechnologies, aquaculture genetic breeding has transformed from traditional selection breeding and hybrid breeding to cell engineering breeding, sex control breeding, marker-assisted selection breeding, genome-wide genotyping-based selective breeding, molecular design breeding and genome editing breeding. Advances in basic research and biotechnology of aquaculture genetic breeding have promoted the formation of aquaculture seed industry in China. Till 2018, 215 new aquaculture varieties were bred and approved by the National Certification Committee for Aquatic Varieties and announced by Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs of China. Through detailed analysis of the main progress, this review summarizes the major events and time nodes in the development of genetic breeding biotechnologies in aquaculture and the current status of new variety breeding and aquaculture seed industry, and thereby prospects for the national requirements in the new era, as well as the roles and significances for promoting sustainable green development in Chinese aquaculture.