A recent study on the Holstein/Friesian (HOL) breed has indicated that the rapid rise in percentage Holstein genes in the United Kingdom (UK) has been accompanied by an increasing rate of inbreeding (Kearney et al., 2004). They reported an average inbreeding rate of 0.17% per year since 1992. Some of the consequences of inbreeding, for instance, inbreeding depression, are expected to be more pr...

There is ample evidence for inbreeding depression manifested as a reduction in fitness or fitness-related traits in the focal individual. In many organisms, fitness is not only affected by genes carried by the individual, but also by genes carried by their parents, for example if receiving parental care. While maternal effects have been described in many systems, the extent to which inbreeding ...

Quadratic partial regression coefficients were estimated for the inbreeding level on five performance traits (body weight, average egg weight, age at first egg, percentage of fertilized eggs, and hatchability of set eggs) of two strains of laying hens. Data on 5631 of H77 layers and 3563 of N88 layers from nine consecutive generations were analysed. Only dams were accounted for. Partial regress...

Inbreeding depression is a phenomenon largely taken for granted among evolutionary geneticists (Conner & Hartl, 2004). For conservation biologists, the most important source of inbreeding comes when small population size leads to nonrandom mating among genotypes, either because available mates are related or because drift has reduced heterozygosity. Either process leads to the over-expression o...

Resource sustainability requires a thorough understanding of the influence of forest management programs on the conservation of genetic diversity in tree populations. To observe how differences in forest management affect the genetic structure of Fagus orientalis Lipsky (oriental beech), we evaluated thirteen beech sites across Hyrcanian forests, based on six microsatellite loci. Significant di...

Multiple-objective programming was used to examine the effects various objectives had on the optimal portfolio of sires chosen for a given breeding problem in a Jersey cow dairy herd. It was assumed that the dairy producer had the following three objectives in the breeding decision: to maximize Net Merit, to minimize inbreeding, and to minimize total expenditure on semen. Integer programming mo...

Diploid clones of the hybrid acacia (Acacia mangium × A. auriculiformis) are widely planted in Vietnam because their high productivity, adaptability, and commercial wood yields. Polyploid breeding offers possibilities for further enhancing vigor generating new value genotypes. In a field trial, we compared three diploid with respective colchicine-induced tetraploid lines. Flowering seed product...