Scientific Challenges to Animal Breeding and Genetics

This paper presents an overview of the history and the foreseeable developments of animal breeding. After the transition from population genetics to modern quantitative genetics, realized in the late 1950s, major progress has occurred in the field of breeding value evaluation and, more recently, with the advent of genomics and its potential contribution to genetic improvement. Various challenges will remain to be faced, in quantitative genetics theory, in the evaluation of gene effects, in the maintenance of genetic variation, and considering possible future changes in the economic framework of animal breeding operations.