Aquaculture Biotechnology

Aquaculture is the farming and husbandry of aquatic organisms under controlled or semi-controlled conditions. These organisms may be plants, fish or shellfish - oysters, mussels, clams, shrimp, crabs, crawfish. With the world's population constantly increasing, and continuing depletion of the aquatic stocks, farming of aquatic organisms is now a substantial global industry. It supplies a significant proportion of the aquatic products consumed and valuable sources of protein and essential nutrient components for global food security and eliminating malnutrition. Aquaculture also plays an important role in rural economies through the creation of new employments. Considering above scenarios, aquaculture output will need to be enhanced several fold in order to meet the rising demands for fish and other aquatic products in coming years. Biotechnology seem to be good option for increasing aqua cultural productivity, and environmental quality worldwide. All of Biotechnology applications could help improve the selective breeding, hybridization, productivity, health, growth, nutrition, cryopreservation and conservation of genetic resources in aqua cultural stocks for the benefit of human beings. In this book some of the application of Biotechnology in aquaculture are discussed, which include: Importance of transgenic fish Epigenetics Application of Biomarker, molecular characterization Histology Aquatic ecosystem monitoring Biosensors for Smart-farming Nutritional assessment of feed items in aquaculture Quality assessment of processed aquatic food from contamination Role and use of patent law.