Aquaculture is the fastest growing food production sector and is rapidly becoming the primary source of seafood for human diets. Selective breeding programs are enabling genetic improvement of production traits, such as disease resistance, but progress is limited by the heritability of the trait and generation interval of the species. New breeding technologies, such as genome editing using CRISPR/Cas9 have the potential to expedite sustainable genetic improvement in aquaculture. Genome editing can rapidly introduce favorable changes to the genome, such as fixing alleles at existing trait loci, creating de novo alleles, or introducing alleles from other strains or species. The high fecundity and external fertilization of most aquaculture species can facilitate genome editing for research and application at a scale that is not possible in farmed terrestrial animals.

水产养殖是增长最快的食品生产部门，正迅速成为人类饮食中海鲜的主要来源。选择性育种计划能够提高生产性状的遗传性，例如抗病性，但进展受该性状的遗传性和该物种的世代间隔限制。新的育种技术，例如使用CRISPR / Cas9进行基因组编辑，具有加速水产养殖业可持续遗传改良的潜力。基因组编辑可以迅速将有利的变化引入基因组，例如将等位基因固定在现有的性状基因座上，从头创造等位基因，或引入其他品系或物种的等位基因。大多数水产养殖物种的高繁殖力和外部受精可以促进基因组编辑，以供研究和应用，其规模在养殖陆生动物中是不可能的。