Sustainable Aquaculture Using Temporal RNA Interference in Crustaceans: The Case of the Insulin-like Androgenic Gland Hormone and Prawn Monosex Culture

Due to over-fishing and deterioration of wild catch, the ever-growing crustacean market is increasingly relying on aquaculture, driving the need for better management techniques. Since most cultured crustacean species exhibit dimorphic growth patterns, the culture of monosex populations (either all-male or all-female) is the preferred approach for gaining higher yields, with the ecological benefit of reducing the risk of invasion by the non-reproducing cultured species. As recently exemplified in prawns, silencing a transcript encoding an androgenic gland-specific
insulin-like peptide trough RNAi, has enabled significant yield
improvement through all-male monosex cultures that are the progeny of sexually reversed genetic males. The procedure is temporal, not using exogenous hormones and non-genetically modifying (non-GMO), thus, marking the first commercialized, RNAi-based, sustainable biotechnology in the entire aquaculture industry. This tool has the potential to revolutionize prawn production, contributing to higher productivity and income for growers.