Objective:
The yellow perch (Perca flavescens) is an important social and economic species in the Great Lakes; however, populations have plummeted. Given strong consumer demand, and high fillet value ($12.00/lb.- $15.00/lb retail), there is an urgent need to develop a sustainable yellow perch aquaculture industry that can deliver a high-quality cultivar year-round. Due to strong consumer demand, research efforts will focus on improving yellow perch production using state-of-the-art genetic and physiological techniques. Our long-term goal is to produce a genetically defined broodstock of yellow perch that will enable development of superior germplasm for release to stakeholders. Initial efforts for this project plan have yielded genetic information on genetic structure among various U.S. perch populations, and have identified new genes and genetic sequences that have been used to 1) direct genetic selection to improve cultivar traits, and 2) be used for pedigree tracking to further improve/support future selective breeding efforts. The new technologies and resources that are developed from this program will continue to support innovation and improvement in perch aquaculture.

Approach:
The aquaculture ¿Tool Box¿ for yellow perch early life stage production has been established, however several parameters need additional work (research) to advance the technology and make it more cost-effective. Aim 1: Improving egg incubation techniques to increase egg survival and hatching success. Experiments will be conducted on the treatment of egg strands during incubation to attempt to decrease fungal growth and increase hatching success. Aim 2. Improve survival & quality of first feeding larvae by reducing dependence upon ¿Green Tank Water¿. Introduce fish starter diets within the first-feeding window (1-2 days post hatch). The aim is to decrease dependence on the use of processed mammalian tissue diets, such as beef liver and heart. Diets will be progressively replace with available commercial larval starter diets. Performance measures such as growth and survival of perch larvae and post-larvae will be determined as a function of commercially-available larval starter diet(s) administration. 1. Continue Development of Genetically Defined Perch Broodstock: The top 25-35% performing fish/strains (from the current performance trial) will be separated, pit-tagged, and genotyped with appropriate microsatellites for a particular strain. Starting at the summer solstice, these fish will be placed under photoperiod and temperature cycling to mimic their geographic origin so that they will develop gonads the following Spring for crossing. During the Fall, 2009, all fish will be blood sampled and the estrogen levels determined by ELISA to obtain an early estimate of male to female sex ratio. 2. Expressed Sequence Tag and Microsatellite Development: The new larval perch library will be sequenced to obtain 8,000 ESTs. This past year the techniques were worked out to produce primary cell culture of granulocytes (presumably macrophages) from the perch head kidney as we have done for rainbow trout. A library will be made from plated perch macrophages stimulated with LPS, poly I:C and CpGs. These will be sequenced for immune gene discovery needed to characterize the innate immune system in yellow perch. We will mine all of the ESTs from all libraries for microsatellites and for SNPs. For microsatellites, we will test new ones to determine their appropriateness for use in pedigree tracking.