• Improved germplasm, health products, fish feeds, and environmentally friendly production systems technology for use by fish farmers. 
• Increased availability of high quality, safe, competitively priced, nutritious and appealing aquaculture products. 
• Reduced U.S. trade deficit. 
• Decreased pressure on threatened commercial capture fisheries. 
• Expansion of domestic and export markets for U.S. aquaculture products and supporting ancillary industries. 
• Jobs creation and contribution to long-term economic growth, particularly in rural and coastal areas.

Program Components

• Genetic Improvement 
• Integrated Aquatic Animal Health Management 
• Reproduction and Early Development 
• Growth and Development, and Nutrition 
• Aquaculture Production Systems 
• Sustainability and Environmental Compatibility of Aquaculture 
• Quality, Safety and Variety of Aquaculture Products for Consumers

Recent Program Accomplishments

• In 2001, ARS and the Mississippi Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station made an improved strain of channel catfish (NWAC-103) available to producers.  The NWAC-103 strain was shown to grow faster than other strains used by producers.  Surveys indicate about 100 million NWAC-103 fingerlings  (which represents 5 to 10 percent of the fingerlings) were stocked in spring 2002.  
• ARS has developed an enteric septicemia vaccine (ESC) for catfish.  Twenty-five percent of catfish raised in 2002 were vaccinated against ESC.  The ESC vaccinated fish outperformed non-vaccinated fish and increased producer profits by about $600 per acre. 
• In 2002, scientists at the Cool and Cold Water Aquaculture Research Center in Leetown, West Virginia, analyzed 45,000 expressed sequence tags that represented genes expressed in rainbow trout kidney, liver, spleen, muscle, brain, and gill tissues.  The sequencing phase of this project has been completed and the bioinformatic analyses begun.  Completion of this research will greatly increase the number of rainbow trout gene sequences available for defining how gene expression impacts important aquaculture production traits that lead to genetic improvement.