| French oyster farming has been subject to severe mortalities during the summer months. Results from the research program "Morest", which ran from 2000 to 2006 and examined the possible causes of these mortalities, led to the construction of a model to explain the interaction between environmental factors, oyster physiology and different opportunistic pathogens underlying oyster summer mortality. Temperature, food, reproduction and stress were the main factors required for oyster mortality. Genetically-based resistance ("R" oysters) or susceptibility ("S" oysters) to summer mortality was revealed by divergent selection. Building on these results, a literature search was made in 2007 on the molecular origin of genetic resistance to such a complex mortality... |
