Unlocking the intraspecific aquaculture potential from the wild biodiversity to facilitate aquaculture development

Domestication of new candidate species remains a long and difficult process often resulting in unfruitful attempts. Early steps in most domestication programmes often consider species as a unity, disregarding a part of the biodiversity: the wild intraspecific geographic differentiation. Yet, this differentiation can shape local specificities, which could lead to different domestication predisposition or socio-economic attractiveness between populations. Therefore, considering this population-specific potential could facilitate domestication and subsequent production of new candidate species. Here, we propose a three-step integrative approach to standardise and facilitate new domestication attempts by taking advantage of wild geographic differentiation. Step 1 consists of classifying the wild biodiversity to identify prospective units (i.e. groups of differentiated allopatric populations). Step 2 allows comparing performances of these units in standardised conditions (i.e. rearing system) through a multifunction and multi-trait assessment. Finally, step 3 highlights units with higher aquaculture potentials through the calculation of an aquaculture potential score. This approach, here applied to fish culture for human consumption, also aims at being extended to other taxa (e.g. crustaceans, molluscs) and other production goals.