Parentage determination of Chinese shrimp (Fenneropenaeus chinensis) based on microsatellite DNA markers

This study was initiated to assess the feasibility of parentage determination in aquaculture populations for Chinese shrimp (Fenneropenaeus chinensis). Under different scenarios both simulation and real, we used microsatellite markers to assign parentage to offspring. Simulations based on allele frequency data from the population of Chinese shrimp demonstrated that 4 loci were required to assign 95% and 5 loci to assign 97% of progeny. When marker data from five loci were combined, the assignment success of progeny to their true parental couple increased to 92.9% in parentage identification with known parental and filial information. Out of 215 offspring, 90.7% was assigned to their parental pairs exclusively in mixed families groups. Discrepancies between the simulations and real data sets were considered to be largely due to the mismatches caused by scoring errors at microsatellite loci. Based on these results, we conclude that the use of a number of microsatellite markers represents a realistic and effective alternative to physical tagging in a selection program and it allows the identification of parental effects on offspring performances from early life stages.