Abstract

Animal breeders have been manipulating genes for cen-turies, in the sense that by selecting the best performing individuals as the parents for the next generation, they have increased the frequency of favourable alleles and concomi-tantly decreased the frequency of unfavourable alleles at genetic loci influencing the traits of interest. With the intro-duction, in the fifties, of complex biometrical methods to estimate breeding values from own performances and per-formances of relatives, so-called “mass selection” has ma-tured into an extremely powerful methodology. Modern breeding programs are largely responsible for the dramatic increase in the efficiency of livestock production that society has witnessed during the second half of this century.

M, Georges

Proceedings of the New Zealand Society of Animal Production, Volume 56, , 5-7, 1996