Rainbow trout is one of the most widely cultured finfish, with production on every continent except Antarctica. They are cultured for production as food fish or in support of recreational fisheries. The United States is a major producer and exporter of rainbow trout germplasm.
The USDA- ARS National Center for Cool and Cold-Water Aquaculture in Leetown, West Virginia, uses genomic selection to improve rainbow trout health and production efficiency in the laboratory of Yniv Palti. This group also focuses on selective breeding, development of genome-enabled breeding strategies, de-novo reference genomes assemblies and annotation for rainbow trout and other salmonids, development of bioinformatic pipelines for new SNP genotyping applications, structural genome analyses, and gene expression and other functional genomic analyses.
Research at the USDA-ARS Small Grains and Potato Germplasm Research Unit in Hagerman, Idaho, selects rainbow trout for growth performance and metabolic utilization of alternative plant diets in the laboratory of Ken Overturf.
