This could be mostly attributed to the crossbreeding of strains during development of the synthetic base population. Together with the subsequent responses to selection, this represents a claimed growth performance advantage of about 125% for GIFT over Philippine farmed strains. In other words, in comparable environments, GIFT should reach harvest size in less than half the time taken by unimproved tilapia strains. However, subsequent comparisons (including those during DEGITA) of the performance of GIFT and other Nile tilapia farmed in Asia show much lower advantages for GIFT and, in some cases, show insignificant differences. This is because the results of any such comparison among strains are valid only for the environment (location, time, and farming system) where they are obtained. A wide range of differences in performance between GIFT and nonGIFT tilapia in Asia is to be expected, given the region’s history of tilapia movements and variable attention to broodstock management, as well as local adaptation of farmed tilapia strains. Despite these complexities, the developers of GIFT demonstrated that selective breeding produced progressively faster growing generations of Nile tilapia, and that application of genetics to tilapia farming—and by inference to tropical aquaculture in general—can result in substantial and rapid development of improved Nile tilapia strains.