IMIS

Shellfish aquaculture needs the development of new tools for the improvement of good practices avoiding the reliance of natural spat collection leading to an increase of production more efficiently. Results showed that the selection of 72 h-old D-larvae for cryopreservation yielded around 75% of recovery, higher than 50% from trochophores. 10% Ethylene-Glycol + 0.4 M Trehalose in Filtered Sea Water (FSW) was the best CPA combination for D-larvae, as well as cooling at -1°C/min and water bath at 35 °C for thawing. SUC solutions did not improved larval recovery at any of the concentrations tested (p>0.05). At settlement, 5.26% of cryopreserved F1 larvae survived and over 70% were able to settle. F2 cryopreservation produced 0.15% of spat and settlement success varied from 35 to 50%. The delay of shell size showed on cryopreserved larvae was in declining throughout larval rearing without significant differences with controls from settlement point (p>0.05). Long-term experiments showed that it is possible to obtain adult mussels from cryopreserved larvae and this tool does not compromise the quality of following progenies, neither cryopreservation nor post-thawing development of them.