There was a noticeable change in emphasis in the contributions to this meeting: fewer quantitative genetics and selective breeding papers than before, more papers dealing with molecular genetics and transgenics. As the latter approaches show solid evidence of their importance to aquaculture, their political and environmental ramifications are coming to the fore and several papers presented at the symposium addressed these issues. The contributions also reflected broad new environmental concerns about the genetic interaction between aquaculture and wild aquatic populations.
The papers selected for publication underwent rigorous peer review and, for reasons of space, selection intensity had to be rather high. A number of worthy papers could not be accommodated and not all abstracts could be included in this proceedings volume.
