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Oysters: Improved Tetraploid & Triploid Oysters

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Overview

Improved Rutgers tetraploid oysters
Triploid oysters (right, 3N) produced from improved tetraploids vs. normal diploid controls (left, 2N).

Variety: Improved Tetraploid & Triploid Oysters
Principal Investigator(s): Ximing Guo
Achievement(s): Triploid oysters produced with the tetraploid technology invented at Rutgers have been commercialized worldwide and now account for 30-60% of farmed oysters in major producing countries.

Tetraploid oysters have 4 sets of chromosomes and when mated with diploids, produce triploids with 3 sets of chromosomes. Triploid oysters are desired for aquaculture because they are sterile and grow significantly faster than diploids. Because of their sterility, triploid oysters can maintain high meat quality during summer, which is important for oyster species that devote most of their soft body mass to gamete production. Sterility presents cultured stocks from interbreeding with wild populations, making oyster farming more environmentally friendly.

Triploids and tetraploids are not GMOs, as they occur in nature. Many agriculture crops such as wheat, strawberry, watermelon and bananas are polyploids as well as some fish and amphibians. Polyploid oysters may occur in nature at very low frequency.

Strengths & Qualities

  • Fast growth, high yield and reach harvest size sooner and before oysters are succumbed to the diseases that are the bane of the industry
  • Disease resistance inherited from diploid disease-resistant strains and further improved by strong selection in tetraploid lines
  • Strong “summer products” vs. diploid (i.e., year-round production)
  • Bigger, fatter, with good consumer aesthetics (nicer looking products)
  • Thick and strong shells, resistant to handling
  • Reproductive inactivity or absence of excessive gonads
  • Non-GMO and ‘natural’ triploids (not induced by toxic chemicals)
  • Uses on both US coasts, as well as foreign waters

For Growers

  • Rutgers licenses tetraploids from disease-resistant strains as patent-expired and newly patented products for triploid production. Tetraploid broodstock are provided free of charge to licensed hatcheries, and triploids can be produced by crossing tetraploid males with diploid females from either Rutgers disease-resistant strains or other stocks
  • Triploid oyster seed can be purchased from licensed hatcheries and cultured the same way as normal oysters

Intellectual Property

  • Haskin NEH®, Haskin DBX
  • US Patent No. 11,266,131 Molluscan shellfish produced by controlled crossbreeding

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