This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project will determine the feasibility of using biotechnology to develop a virus-resistant shrimp for farming. Shrimp farming is the world's most valuable aquaculture industry and has suffered significant losses to viral disease. Recent advances in biotechnology have developed plants and animals with specific resistance to certain chemicals and pathogens. The commercial intent of this project is to develop a reproducible shrimp stock resistant to shrimp viral disease(s) for commercial shrimp farming. This project is a collaboration between a commercial shrimp breeding company, High Health Aquaculture (HHA), and two university research groups, University of Hawaii (UH) and University of Arizona (UA). HHA will manage the project and will produce the shrimp studied in the project. The UH group will provide transgenic technology based on their successful insect transgenic work. The UA group will provide shrimp virology expertise to the project. In 1997, world shrimp farming produced 690,000 MT with crop value exceeding $4 billion. Nearly all of this production depended on the use of wild shrimp stocks which are unstable in supply, often contaminated with serious shrimp diseases and not adapted to modern production systems. Application of biotechnology to develop a shrimp stock with superior production performance represents a substantial commercial opportunity modeled on the rapid advances and commercialization of agricultural biotechnology.
