Emerging diseases in shrimp culture: overview of viral and bacterial diseases in the Americas

The expansion of shrimp culture in the Americas has been historically limited by disease epidemics that caused severe production crashes. As intensive culture systems provide almost ideal conditions for the propagation of infectious diseases, the producers are constantly looking for means to manage diseases to minimize losses in production and quality. The most attractive options are exclusion or eradication, breeding for disease resistance and various sanitary measures. On the other hand, low market prices limits the resources invested in shrimp diagnostics and prevention. In this scenario, identification of new pathogens could be restricted to outbreaks with high mortalities, thus making shrimp producers more susceptible to the effect of shrimp pathogens. In this review, we analyzed the main shrimp diseases in the Americas.