Hans B. Bentsen

TL;DR: The results indicated highly significant differences among the growth performances of the eight strains, with the exception of the Ghana strain, the newly introduced African wild strains performed as well as or better than the most widely farmed Asian strains.

TL;DR: It was concluded that specific crossing schemes, possibly involving specialised sire and dam lines, may improve growth performance in Nile tilapia, but that this improvement will be quite marginal and should be accompanied by selection within the parent strains.

TL;DR: It was found that to keep inbreeding rates low, a minimum of 50 pairs of breeders should be selected and the number of progeny tested should be restricted and standardized to not less than 30–50 progeny per pair.

TL;DR: It was concluded that as the additive genetic variation in the base population was large, the harvest weight of the GIFT fish could be effectively improved by selective breeding, and that there was no immediate need to develop separate strains for different environments.

TL;DR: The results are consistent with the realization that the GIFT population responds well to selection for increased body weight at harvest across a wide range of pond farm environments (including rice–fish culture) without the need to develop environment specific selection lines.