Chengmin Sun¹ , Rudi Mai²

1 Center for Tropical Marine Fisheries Research, Hainan Institute of Tropical Agricultural Resources, Sanya, 572025, Hainan, China
2 Hainan Tropical Agricultural Resources Research Institute, Tropical Bioresources Research Center, Sanya, 572025, Hainan, China
Author    Correspondence author
International Journal of Molecular Zoology, 2025, Vol. 15, No. 1   doi: 10.5376/ijmz.2025.15.0005
Received: 01 Jan., 2025    Accepted: 10 Feb., 2025    Published: 25 Feb., 2025

This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Sun C.M., and Mai R.D., 2025, Genetic regulation of fast growth traits and genomic selection for breeding in groupers, International Journal of Molecular Zoology, 15(1): 38-47 (doi: 10.5376/ijmz.2025.15.0005)

Grouper has become a key aquaculture species in recent years due to its fast growth and high efficiency. However, traditional breeding methods are inefficient and have long cycles, making it difficult to meet the demand for high-yield and high-resistance new strains. To explore the genetic mechanism of its rapid growth, the study was carried out from two levels: genetic basis and molecular regulation, and the current more mature genome breeding strategies were sorted out. There are still difficulties in actual operation, such as high typing costs, imperfect reference genomes, and limited breeding efficiency. It is worth noting that hybrid groupers show obvious growth advantages, which may be driven by the "middle parent effect". In other words, although the two parents have their own shortcomings, they have a stronger growth ability after combination. From this perspective, scientifically designing parent combinations may be a more realistic breakthrough at present. The study emphasizes that, only by truly establishing high-quality and renewable genome resources and using a new generation of molecular tools can grouper breeding be accelerated and improved, and the entire industry can embark on the road of sustainable development.

Grouper; Growth traits; Genetic regulation; Genomic selection; Molecular breeding