International Journal of Aquaculture, 2025, Vol.15, No.5, 229-239 http://www.aquapublisher.com/index.php/ija 229 Meta Analysis Open Access Genetic Basis of Growth Traits in Shrimp Based on QTL and GWAS Studies Linhua Zhang1, Shiying Yu2 1 Institute of Life Science, Jiyang College of Zhejiang A&F University, Zhuji, 311800, Zhejiang, China 2 Biotechnology Research Center, Cuixi Academy of Biotechnology, Zhuji, 311800, China Corresponding author: shiying.yu@cuixi.org International Journal of Aquaculture, 2025, Vol.15, No.5 doi: 10.5376/ija.2025.15.0022 Received: 30 Jul., 2025 Accepted: 09 Sep., 2025 Published: 20 Sep., 2025 Copyright © 2025 Zhang and Yu, 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. Preferred citation for this article: Zhang L.H., and Yu S.Y., 2025, Genetic basis of growth traits in shrimp based on QTL and GWAS studies, International Journal of Aquaculture, 15(5): 229-239 (doi: 10.5376/ija.2025.15.0022) Abstract Shrimps are an important part of global aquaculture, especially South American white shrimp and other varieties dominate the global aquatic supply, and their output accounts for more than half of the world's total crustacean production. Growth traits (such as body length, weight, etc.) are directly related to breeding yield and economic benefits, and are one of the core goals of aquatic breeding. In recent years, molecular genetic technologies such as quantitative trait locus (QTL) localization and genome-wide association analysis (GWAS) have made progress in the field of aquatic products and have been gradually applied to shrimp genetic breeding research. This study reviews the main growth traits of shrimp and their biological mechanisms, reviews the current application status of QTL localization and GWAS in the study of growth traits of shrimp, summarizes the research progress of key molecular markers and candidate genes, and discusses the combination of traditional breeding and molecular assistive means using Chinese shrimp as an example. Finally, future strategies and international cooperation in shrimp molecular breeding are expected. Keywords Shrimp; growth traits; Quantitative trait loci (QTL); Genome-wide association analysis (GWAS); Molecular marker-assisted breeding 1 Introduction Shrimp plays an important role in the global aquaculture industry. In particular, due to its fast growth and strong adaptability, Litopenaeus vannamei has become the world's highest-growing crustacean variety, accounting for more than 50% of the total global aquaculture crustacean production. Asia is the main production area, and the shrimp farming industry in China, Southeast Asia and India is booming, providing the world with a large amount of high-quality animal protein. Prawns are cultivated along the coast and inland China, and are one of the important industries for increasing fishery income and farmers to get rich. However, the development of different shrimp species is not balanced. For example, Chinese shrimps in China have plummeted due to disease outbreaks in the 1990s, while foreign vannabinoid shrimps have occupied the mainstream of breeding with higher survival and growth advantages (Ma et al., 2024; Wang et al., 2024). Growth rate and final yield are one of the most concerned economic traits of aquaculture. For shrimp farming, individual weight and specifications directly determine market value. Faster-growing shrimps can shorten the breeding cycle, reduce feed and management costs. Studies have shown that shrimp growth traits have moderate to high heritability and can be significantly improved through breeding. In traditional breeding, breeders mostly use fast growth and large individual parent shrimp as the selection criteria. After continuous generations of family breeding, the growth rate of some shrimp varieties has been significantly improved. For example, the growth rate of new varieties such as vannabinoid shrimp "Kohai 1" and "Zhongxing 2" cultivated in China has significantly improved compared with the unbreeding groups (Huang et al., 2019). With the development of molecular biology and genomics, breeders have begun to apply technologies such as QTL localization and GWAS to the genetic analysis of quantitative traits of aquatic animals. These methods have been successful in fish, such as Atlantic salmon, raw fish, etc., the growth, meat quality, disease resistance and other traits have been identified. QTL studies have constructed high-density genetic linkage maps to locate gene segments that control quantitative traits and provide molecular markers for important traits (Andriantahina et al.,
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