Parental allocation in Acipenser naccarii - statistical aspects and software development

The parental allocation (PA) in aquaculture allows the association between progeny and broodstock stocks even if the different families of offspring are reared in the same tank. Fingerprinting is needed for PA, and microsatellites are the codominant and polymorphic markers mainly used for this purpose. The simplest method of PA is the exclusion approach, based on the Mendelian mode of inheritance. The rejection of a parent-offspring hypothesis is based on incompatibility between DNA-profiling of offspring and parents. When the exclusion method is not possible a likelihood approach can be used, therefore the progeny is assigned to parents which are not excluded using the likelihood scores derived from their genotypes. Parentage is ambiguous when more parents present the highest non zero likelihood. The software for PA is disposable for diploids, but not for polyploids like sturgeons, in particular Acipenser naccarii which is a functional tetraploid species. To solve the problems concerning to the PA in tetraploids a Windows-based software was developed, using the exclusion method and likelihood approach in the case of multiple allocations. A simulation computer-procedure was also developed to validate the software algorithms. The total results obtained were: correct allocations 93.7%; ambiguous allocations 2.1% and erroneous allocations 4.2%.