The Pacific oyster (Crassostrea gigas) accounts for the largest production of all bivalve species in the world, and shows a wide range of between- and within-individual variation of shell colour trait. However, little is known about the genetic parameters of its shell color trait. Four generations of family selection and mass selection were carried out to develop the excellent strains of C. gigas with golden shell colour and rapid growth traits. A total of 25 full-sib families from 10 male and 30 female parents were established successfully by using the method of nested design in 2014. These parental breeders were collected from the fourth-generation selective strain of C. gigas produced in 2013.At the age of 9 months, we measured and compared the phenotypic growth traits and the shell colour parameters based on the CIE 1976 Lab colorimetric system among progeny. The genetic parameters of shell color pigmentation and correlation with growth traits were estimated using ASReml 3.0. The results showed that the average values of the colour parameters of the L^*(lightness), a^*(redness), and b^*(yellowness) were greater than those of the control group except ΔE (colour difference), especially b^* which represented the difference between the golden breeding strain and the common population, evidencing the expected selection effect of the golden shell color trait.Coefficients of variation of the progeny were 13.14%~31.84% for growth traits, and 12.34%-63.89% for color parameters, suggesting that there was great genetic variation. Heritabilities of L^*, a^*, b^* and ΔE were 0.13±0.09, 0.69±0.19, 0.30±0.13, 0.38±0.15, respectively. The phenotypic correlations and genetic correlations of L^*, a^*, b^* and ΔE had significant differences, with the ranges of -0.19~0.80 and -0.25-0.37 respectively. The phenotypic correlations and genetic correlations between the growth traits and color parameters were very low, ranging from -0.10 to 0.13 and -0.04 to 0.26 respectively. The results demonstrated that the heritability of the golden-colour shell trait of C. gigas was significantly moderate and high except L^*, suggesting the potential for the selection of the golden shell color trait was high. However, indirect selection of the shell color trait using growth traits is infeasible due to their low correlations. Furthermore, only the color traits and growth traits were selected as the targets of selective breeding at the same time, and the traits could be improved. The present study provides important information for future selective breeding programmes for C. gigas with golden shell color trait.