Breeding strategies and parental effects play a major role in genetic selection programmes for quality trait improvement. The black-lip pearl oyster, Pinctada margaritifera, is a protandrous hermaphrodite species in which the number of mature females is low, and these only appear after 4 years of culture. This difference underlines the importance of studying the contributions of dams and sires in the production and selection of donor pearl oyster families to choose the most appropriate breeding strategies for cultured pearl quality trait improvement. Laboratory crosses were made using wild dams and sires to produce half-sib families from polyandry and polygyny mating designs. The resulting half-sib families were used as donor oysters in a large grafting experiment of 900 grafts with random recipient oysters, using nuclei of the same size and brand, the same operating technician and the same grow-out site. After 18 months of culture, 497 cultured pearls were harvested. Comparison between half-sib pairs revealed that for nacre thickness, weight and shape, a polygyny effect exists, whereas no significant effect was observed for the polyandry mating. By contrast, no evidence of dam- or sire-related benefits was found for the presence/absence of circles, darkness level and colour categories or grade and its components: lustre and surface defects. These results should have important implications for the selective breeding of donor pearl oysters for hatchery management.