ORIGINAL ARTICLE General and specific combining ability in Serrasalmidae Adriano Carvalho Costa 1 | Hortência Aparecida Botelho 2 | Richardson Cesar da Silva Gomes 3 | Sergio Augusto de Sousa Campos 3 | Rafael Vilhena Reis Neto 4 | Marcio Balestre 5 | Fernanda Dotti do Prado 6 | Diogo Teruo Hashimoto 7 | Diego Galetti Martins 6 | Fábio Porto‐Foresti 6 | Mário Lima 1 | Rilke Tadeu Fonseca de Freitas 3 1 Goiano Federal Institute, Rio Verde, Brazil 2 Department of Animal Science, Goiás Federal University, Goiânia, Brazil 3 Department of Animal Science, Lavras Federal University, Lavras, Brazil 4 Course Coordination of Fishing Engineering, São Paulo State University, Registro, Brazil 5 Department of Exact Science, Lavras Federal University, Lavras, Brazil 6 Department of Biological Sciences, São Paulo State University, Bauru, Brazil 7 Aquaculture Center of UNESP, São Paulo State University, Jaboticabal, Brazil Correspondence Adriano Carvalho Costa Goiano Federal Institute, Rio Verde, GO, Brazil. Email: adriano.costa@ifgoiano.edu.br Funding information CNPq National Council for Scientific and Technological Development, Grant/Award Number: (CNPq ‐ Award Number: 483334 / 2009‐0); Goiano Federal Institute Abstract This work was carried out to predict the combining abilities, both general and speci- fic, for performance traits and bodily yields of Serrasalmidae. Ninety‐six 30‐day‐old juveniles were purchased from two commercial fish farms, 12 of each of the follow- ing eight genetic groups: pacu, pirapitinga, tambaqui, tambacu, tambatinga, patinga, paqui and piraqui. Six fish from each genetic group were grown in 500‐L fibreglass tanks (two tanks per genetic group) until they were 495 days old. At the end of the growth period fish were weighed, subjected to morphometric analysis and pro- cessed to obtain their bodily yields. Two nuclear markers and one mitochondrial marker were used to confirm the identity of the animals. Combining abilities were obtained using the method proposed by Griffing in 1956 (Australian Journal of Bio- logical Science, 4, 463–493) adapted to a mixed models analysis, environmental effects were estimated by the empirical best linear unbiased estimator method and genetic effects (general and specific combining abilities) were estimated with the empirical best linear unbiased predictor. Predictions of the combining abilities of advanced hybrids were obtained by the mixed models mixture method with normal distributions. Tambaqui showed higher general and specific combining abilities than the other groups for most of the variables, making it the most important genetic group. General combining ability makes a greater contribution to phenotypic vari- ance than specific combining ability for most variables, indicating a predominance of genes with an additive effect in the control of evaluated traits. KEYWORDS Colossoma macropomum, diallel crossbreeding, fish breeding, Piaractus brachypomum, Piaractus mesopotamicus, round fish 1 | INTRODUCTION The farming of tilapia has dominated the South American continental aquaculture market due to advances in production technology (Melo et al., 2013). However, recent studies on native species from some regions and some hybrids have shown high yield potential (Fernandes et al., 2018; Hashimoto, Prado, Senhorini, Forest & Porto‐Foresti, 2013; Reis Neto, Freitas, et al., 2012). Among the spe- cies with high potential, representatives of the Serrasalmidae family, the pacu (Piaractus mesopotamicus), pirapitinga (Piaractus brachypo- mus) and tambaqui (Colossoma macropomum), and their interspecific Received: 30 August 2017 | Revised: 15 October 2018 | Accepted: 23 October 2018 DOI: 10.1111/are.13913 Aquaculture Research. 2018;1–8. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/are © 2018 John Wiley & Sons Ltd | 1