Mapping quantitative trait loci for infectious salmon anaemia resistance in a North American strain of Atlantic salmon

Infectious salmon anaemia (ISA) is a highly virulent viral disease of Atlantic salmon that causes massive economic losses to infected aquaculture operations. Our goal was to detect and map quantitative trait loci (QTL) that confer resistance to ISA in an admixed commercial strain of Atlantic salmon that was largely founded from the Saint John River (SJR) in North America. Full-sibling families were challenged with a virulent strain of ISA virus. Mortality was tracked during two annual trials with individual fish that survived to the end of the trial being classified as 'resistant', and those that died were classified as 'susceptible'. Ten families with intermediate levels of mortality and an average size of 54.2 individuals were chosen for genotyping with a 50K SNP array designed for the SJR strain. Single nucleotide polymorphisms that were segregating within families were first used to make a composite 11K female linkage map that was then used to find the positions of QTL for ISA resistance using a half-sib model. The dam-based HS model detected a total of three QTL for ISA resistance including an experiment-wide significant QTL on Ssa25 that accounted for 8.3% of the phenotypic variance and chromosome-wide significant QTL on Ssa03 and on Ssa04 that accounted for 6.0% and 6.6% respectively. We conclude that classic linkage mapping within families continues to be an important method of detecting QTL for oligogenic traits in strains founded from multiple populations. Single nucleotide polymorphisms with moderate trait effects are being used to select within families for more ISA-resistant strains of Atlantic salmon.