Genetic quality monitoring of crimson snapper fingerlings for stock enhancement

In present, genetic quality monitoring method of hatchery-reared fingerlings for stock enhancement has not been established in China, which leads to neglection of genetic quality of fry in screening process of releasing project. With the expansion of scale of releasing, this blind spot is genetically threating to natural populations day by day. In order to establish the method, we compared the fingerlings of a Lutjanus erythopterus stock and an L.erythopterus natural stock from four aspects (genetic divergence, genetic diversity, inbreeding and genetic information retention), and evaluated their genetic quality. The results show that faint genetic divergence existed between the two stocks (F_ST=0.016 1), and their genetic diversity level and effective population size of the fingerling stock were lower than those of the natural stock, with higher average inbreeding coefficients and F_IS values. It is proved that for genetic diversity, this fingerling stock is inferior to the natural stock, and the genetic quality of the fingerling stock fails to meet the requirement of stock enhancement, so releasing the stock may produce negative genetic effects. Since the deviation rate of effective population size was the highest (-35.34%), the effective population size is considered to be the major genetic quality defect.