Leg health has been an important component of broiler welfare and of the economy of broiler production for many decades and includes a wide range of leg disorders leading to locomotion problems (e.g. Thorp, 1994; SCAHAW, 2000; Bradshaw et al., 2002). This article will focus on five leg health traits recorded within the Aviagen Ltd (Newbridge, UK) breeding programme, namely (1) long bones deform...

Introduction Knowledge about genetic diversity is a prerequisite of any breeding programme. Inclusion of diverse parents in hybridisation programmes serves the purpose of combining desirable genes in new recombinations. Mahalanobi’s D statistic (7) is a powerful tool in quantifying the degree of divergence at genotypic level. Several workers have used this method to quantify the degree of diver...

Business transformations are complex organisational change endeavours that result in a business performing current work differently, or performing different work. Information Technology (IT) is a key enabler of such initiatives, but comes with its challenges, as revamping the IT infrastructure in large-scale organisations implies high complexity, high risk, and often high failure rates. We view...

The finding of new self-compatible cultivars in local population is a breeder’s objective in order to increase the sources of self-compatibility for the almond (Prunus amygdalus Batsch) breeding programmes. ‘AS-1’, a local Spanish selection, was considered to be self-compatible according to its self pollen tube growth and was incorporated in the almond breeding programme of Zaragoza as a source...

the review focuses on recent progress in the breeding of small grain cereals (barley, wheat, oats) for resistance to the barley yellow dwarf virus (BYDv). first, the symptomatology of barley yellow dwarf (BYD) disease is briefly described and the genome of BYDv, its serotypes and mechanisms of its replication and translation in host plants are characterized. great attention is paid to the descr...

Integrating natural resources management in the secondary school curriculum in Kenya has received a lot of talk without adequate practical activities. The Farmers of the Future Programme under the World Agroforestry Centre, formally the International Centre for Research in Agroforestry (ICRAF), initiated a practical approach to integration of natural resources management in the secondary school...

Early maturity is a highly important factor in the interrelations between yield, grain moisture, and plant density, contributing to cost-efficient maize production. Landraces conserved gene banks present promising basis for enriching diversity of early breeding material. To start speed up mobilization genetic resources maintained ex situ Maize Research Institute Zemun Polje bank collection, whi...

Tolerance to drought is a quantitative trait, with a complex phenotype, often confounded by plant phenology. Breeding for drought tolerance is further complicated since several types of abiotic stress, such as high temperatures, high irradiance, and nutrient toxicities or deficiencies can challenge crop plants simultaneously. Although marker-assisted selection is now widely deployed in wheat, i...

108 (eds M.C.S. Wopereis et al.) Africa are already in place. These include diverse germplasm resources, reference genome sequences (RefSeq) for both wild and cultivated Oryza species, highand low-density SNP arrays and sequence-based genotyping platforms, co ordinated phenotyping networks, and models and strategies for using genomics information to predict phenotypic performance in a breeding ...

Genealogical data have been used very widely to construct indices with which to examine the contribution of plant breeding programmes to the maintenance and enhancement of genetic resources. In this paper we use such indices to examine changes in the genetic diversity of the winter wheat crop in England and Wales between 1923 and 1995. We find that, except for one period characterized by the do...