Informatics as Future for Fish Genetic Resources Management

Informatics is the application of data science to extract and communicate actionable knowledge in the context of a specialised domain. Informatics will play an increasingly important role in management of genetic resources for aquaculture as the industry pursues automation and optimisation of processes in pursuit of intensification. This will likely parallel the adoption of industrial control systems in technology-oriented “smart farms”, which will drive instrumentation of farming systems. Aquaculture has historically under-invested in genetic resource management and all aspects of information technology, including informatics, but both have potential to generate substantial benefits. Data capture and computational resources for informatics are no longer limiting. They are cheap, easy to obtain and manage, due to advances in microelectronics, software virtualisation and cloud computing. Human resources are now the main bottleneck in application of informatics in aquatic genetic resources management. There is a need for the aquaculture sector to invest in developing its own professional capacity in informatics, as it is unlikely to be able to recruit personnel from more industrialised, higher-paying sectors