In animal agriculture, seafood consumption in the US and globally is on the rise. Aquaculture, an attempt to support the demand for seafood consumption, maximizes the growth of commercially relevant species and decreases the cost to feed through fish husbandry practices that manipulate factors like nutrition, oxygen levels, and temperature. One problem that affects most aquaculture systems is low dissolved oxygen levels. Low oxygen levels are a problem because low oxygen environments can slow the growth of organisms like commercially relevant aquaculture species and lead to the death of fish (affecting or increasing cost and causing loss to fish farmers). Additionally, a previous study conducted using disease-resistant rainbow trout fed high choline diets showed no increase in growth performance but altered expression patterns associated with hypoxia-related genes. Hinting at performance trait selection potentially having implications on other traits such as response to low oxygen environments.
This study will utilize the performance-selected fishes bred for disease resistance (a feature relevant to aquaculture) from the USDA National Center for Cool and Cold Water Aquaculture (NCCCWA) in Leetown, WV. This study will investigate the effects of low oxygen levels (chronic hypoxia) on their growth (i.e., for market relevance: disease resistance), stress response, and metabolism while unraveling if the performance trait of disease resistance they are selected for, affects their response to hypoxia environments as well. Data will shed light on the potential implication of conditioning and generating fishes with these performance traits that can tolerate low oxygen environments with little to no drawbacks on their growth for the aquaculture industry.