Shrimp industry makes tremendous impact on Thailand's export value each year. Despite its economic significance, shrimp farming has been struggling with several problems that remain to be solved. Therefore, the primary goal of our research group is to develop effective strategies that can help enhance shrimp production yield by emphasizing on disease and reproduction problems that are foremost impediment to shrimp aquaculture development. Recent studies by our group have provided strong evidence that dsRNA can mediate protection against shrimp viruses through RNA interference. Currently we are focusing on several aspects to further developing this approach that will make it more practical for protecting farmed shrimps from the virus. Another line of research will be focused on the improvement of reproductive performance of captive shrimp, especially on the induction of ovarian maturation in female broodstock that is a vital step for successful production of high quality shrimp fries in the hatchery. Researches in our group will be conducted in order to meet the following specific goals.