LILY Oyster Seed VA

Disease resistant and triploid oyster brood stocks produced under license with the College of William and Mary.  Breeding work by the Aquaculture Genetics and Breeding Technology Center (ABC) at Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS).

To make the sterile, robust, fast growing triploid, male tetraploid lines are used, also created and improved at ABC, to cross with the female diploid line, which yields triploids.

The family selected lines are undergoing intense, directed selection by ABC, with continual improvements each generation. Family breeding provides a means of adding multiple traits, such as meat yield and cup shape to the principal ones of disease resistance and fast growth. LILY low salinity oysters are tested in separate environments to provide a full range of performance across mid Atlantic conditions and similar environments.

• A low salinity stock
• with less disease tolerance,
• but good growth performance at low salinity. 
• The ancestors of this stock are a composite of early mass selected lines with established disease tolerance that are now bred using family breeding techniques.
• Selection traits include fast growth,
• high survival,
• shell shape
• and high meat shell ratio.
  

Shellfish growers have the ability to select from a number of lines that have shown their utility for various growing conditions in the mid Atlantic and similar growing environments. Finding the right one for you is ultimately a function of your specific farm conditions and grow out techniques and therefore a matter of trial and error. If you are currently using a particular line, and want to try another, try a small quantity of the new line before jumping ship. Whichever line you settle on, most people use the triploid version of it.

Seed sizes below are defined by the grading screen size on which the seed is retained, e.g. a 2mm seed is that which sits on a 2mm screen and is usually 4mm to 6mm in actual shell height.

First availability is in April for smaller seeds and May onwards for larger shells.