[OANNES Foro] "Tilapia lake virus" finally identified

[Mario Cabrejos]

A mysterious virus that has decimated tilapia fish stocks in Ecuador and
Israel has finally been identified by an international team of scientists.

Deadly fish virus finally identified
<http://www.scidev.net/global/author.pablo-correa-torres.html> 

 <http://www.scidev.net/global/author.pablo-correa-torres.html> Pablo Correa
Torres

29/04/16

http://www.scidev.net/global/fisheries/news/deadly-fish-virus-finally-identi
fied.html?utm_medium=email&utm_source=SciDevNewsletter&utm_campaign=internat
ional%20SciDev.Net%20update%3A%203%20May%202016



The virus, dubbed tilapia lake virus, was long suspected to be behind mass
die offs of valuable farmed tilapia in Ecuador and Israel since 2009. In a
paper  <http://dx.doi.org/10.1128/mBio.00431-16> published in the journal
mBio last month (5 April), the researchers say that nine of the ten genome
segments they have identified are unrelated to any other known virus.

"Our findings suggest that tilapia lake virus represents a novel virus, and
confirm that it poses a global threat to tilapia aquaculture," says joint
lead author Eran Bacharach, a virologist at Tel Aviv University in Israel.

The virus causes lethargy, skin flaking and kidney problems in infected
fish, which ultimately kills them.

Tilapia lake virus caused stocks of farmed fish to plummet by 85 per cent in
Israel, making the disease a concern for scientists and fish farmers alike.
The research effort that resulted in the paper was down to a collaboration
between institutes in Israel, the United Kingdom, the United States and the
West Indies.

 
<http://www.scidev.net/global/technology/multimedia/hack-aquaculture-tilapia
-WSN.html> Tilapia fish aquaculture became popular (see graph) as fish
stocks in the oceans dwindled in the 1990s through overfishing. The global
tilapia trade is worth an estimated US$7.5 billion a year, according to the
paper. The largest producers are China, Ecuador, Egypt, Indonesia and
Thailand, while the largest importer is the United States.

 

Before the virus emerged, tilapia farms only had to protect their stock from
bacteria and fungi, says Margy Villanueva, the leader of the National
Sanitary Program for Aquaculture Species at the Colombian Agricultural
Institute, who has worked with the international consortium. Colombia is
still waiting for scientific results to confirm that its mass tilapia die
off in 2009 was caused by the tilapia lake virus.

"Now we need a better understanding of the virus epidemiology, its
biological properties, infectious capacity and routes of contagion,"
Villanueva says. "But, above all, farmers must report any cases and
establish biosecurity measures", she says, such as disinfecting new fish and
destroying affected fish stocks.

 

Biosecurity can be an issue in countries with weak reporting systems, says
Francisco Forero, a fish researcher at Jorge Tadeo Lozano University in
Bogota, Colombia.

"The problem in many countries, as in Colombia, is that there are no
controls when [new fish stocks] are introduced," he says. "And producers
break the biosecurity rules everywhere." 

 



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