The quality of Scottish salmon could be improved following an important advance in the DNA fingerprinting of the fish.

The development has been achieved by the Scotland and Chile-based breeding firm Landcatch Natural Selection (LNS), working in conjunction with scientists at the Roslin Institute near Edinburgh and at the Institute of Aquaculture in Stirling.

The Alloa-based company is already responsible for the production of 110 million salmon eggs from locations in Scotland and Chile and is on target to supply 20% of the world's salmon eggs by 2010.

It has been applying DNA fingerprinting to its breeding programme for more than 10 years . Now, by combining its extensive performance database with the results of DNA fingerprinting, it has been able to improve both growth and disease resistance.

"Effectively, this means we can now look directly at the DNA of our broodstock salmon and identify those with the most favourable genes for growth and robustness," said Dr Alan Tinch, LNS breeding programme director.