Progress, challenges and perspectives on fish gamete cryopreservation: A mini-review

- Freezing protocols have been developed for many fish species.
- Gamete cryopreservation has applications in aquaculture, biotechnology or cryobanking.
- The lack of standardization limits the industrial use of fish gamete cryopreservation.
- PGCs, spermatogonia or somatic cells are alternatives for fish genome preservation.
- The improvement of techniques for sperm quality evaluation is required.

Protocols for the cryopreservation of fish gametes have been developed for many different fish species, in special, freshwater salmonids and cyprinids. Methods for sperm freezing have progressed during the last decades due to the increasing number of potential applications: aquaculture (genetic improvement programs, broodstock management, helping with species having reproductive problems), biotechnology studies using model fish species (preservation of transgenic or mutant lines), cryobanking of genetic resources from endangered species, etc.This mini-review tries to give an overview of the present situation of this area of research, identifying the main challenges and perspectives, redirecting the reader to more in-depth reviews and papers.