Shrimp

Thailand is a leader in cultivated shrimp production and it has gained a competitive advantage through higher farm productivity and better disease control. Major export markets for Thai shrimp are the USA and Japan.

Domestication of black tiger shrimp is critical to help overcome the problems arising from the use of wild shrimp and domesticated stocks. It also allows for the selection of important traits, such as the fast-growing or disease-resistance strains in this species. Raising domesticated specific pathogen-free (SPF) black tiger shrimp broodstock is one of the main research priorities and it involves both the government and the private sector.

To gain further insight into molecular aspects governing reproductive processes and immune systems of black tiger prawn for future functional genomic studies, a largescale expressed sequence tag (EST) sequencing project has been undertaken. cDNA libraries were constructed from different tissues, including the eyestalk, hepatopancreas, haematopoietic tissue, haemocyte, lymphoid organ and ovary of shrimps reared under normal or stress conditions.

Shrimp have an efficient innate immune system to defend against invading foreign materials and this enables them to live in an environment rich in bacteria and viruses. Research in Thailand has thus been directed towards the identification and characterization of immune effectors, the development of assays to evaluate and monitor the immune state of shrimp and the selection of disease-resistant shrimp.