Identifying Nile tilapia strains and their hybrids farmed in Brazil using microsatellite markers

The objective of this work was to evaluate a Bayesian model-based clustering method to identify the strains of Nile tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus) individuals from fish farms in Southern Brazil. Assignment methods using nine microsatellite loci were applied to differentiate individuals of five reference strains (GIFT, GST, Nilótica, Chitralada, and Saint Peter) and to identify individuals of unknown strains from fish farms near the Itaipu reservoir and in the Uruguay River basin. The procedure assigned the correct strain in more than 90% of the cases and was also able to detect hybrids between strains. The obtained results showed that several fish farms in Southern Brazil cultivate more than one tilapia strain and even interstrain hybrids. The proposed methodology is a reliable tool for the identification of the strain origin of Nile tilapia individuals.