Quantitative traits, such as size and weight in animals and seed yield in plants, are distributed normally, even within a population of genetically identical individuals. For example, in plants, various factors, such as local soil quality, microclimate, and sowing depth, affect growth differences among individual plants of isogenic populations. Besides these physical factors, also epigenetic co...

The degree to which, and rapidity with which, inbreeding depression can be purged from a population has important implications for conservation biology, captive breeding practices, and invasive species biology. The degree and rate of purging also informs us regarding the genetic mechanisms underlying inbreeding depression. We examine the evolution of mean survival and inbreeding depression in s...

Genetic diversity in the U.S. Hereford population was characterized by examining the level and rate of inbreeding and effective population size. Pedigree records for 20,624,418 animals were obtained from the American Hereford Association, of which 96.1% had both parents identified. Inbreeding coefficients were computed and mean inbreeding (Fx) calculated by year from 1900 to 2001. Inbreeding in...

Anopheles gambiae is a major mosquito vector of malaria in Africa. Although increased use of insecticide-based vector control tools has decreased malaria transmission, elimination is likely to require novel genetic control strategies. It can be argued that the absence of an A. gambiae inbred line has slowed progress toward genetic vector control. In order to empower genetic studies and enable p...

  Maize is the main staple food of world but it nutritional deficient due to scarcity two essential amino acids viz., lysine and tryptophan. Under this study, opaque2 gene from QPM donor (CML-169) was transferred into normal maize (BAJIM-08-26) through marker aided backcross breeding method. The specific SSR (phi057) used for foreground selection in BC1F1 BC2F1 generations. heterozygous of...

Peach palm (Bactris gasipaes) is cultivated by many indigenous and traditional communities from Amazonia to Central America for its edible fruits, and is currently important for its heart-of-palm. The objective of this study was to investigate the mating system of peach palm, as this is important for conservation and breeding. Eight microsatellite loci were used to genotype 24 open-pollinated p...

Abstract New first and 1.5 generation seed orchards are to be created in Germany based on recently assembled breeding populations of Acer pseudoplatanus , Larix sp., Picea abies Pinus sylvestris Pseudotsuga menziesii Quercus sp. To justify the high expenses time cost for orchard establishment maintenance, planning should make use consolidated knowledge experience both national international sci...

We present a phenotypic model for the evolution of self-fertilization in an infinite population of annual hermaphrodites for the case in which fitness and inbreeding depression vary among generations (e.g., due to fluctuations in the environment from year to year). Conditions for the evolution of selfing, mixed mating, and outcrossing are derived and are compared with results from numerical cal...

The objective of this study was to select Pinus kesya progenies by the estimation of genetic parameters using the method of restricted maximum likelihood (Reml) and prediction of additive genetic values by the best linear unbiased prediction (Blup). The Pinus kesya progeny test was installed in randomized blocks, which consisted of 30 progenies and three replications. The twenty-year-old trees ...