Inbreeding results from the mating of related individuals and is becoming increasingly important in domestic livestock populations. Inbreeding depression is the reduction of the mean phenotypic value, particularly for traits connected with reproduction or fitness (Miglior et al., 1992). Inbreeding depression has been shown to decrease milk production by approximately 9-26 kg of milk per lactati...

In general the importance of functional traits is increasing in all dairy cattle populations over the last decade. Beside udder and fertility problems claw and foot disorders are main involuntary culling reasons. Linear description of feet and leg traits in the frame of conformation scoring didn’t reduce claw and leg problems as expected. Therefore new ways of data recording should be establish...

A genome scan was conducted in two US Holstein half-sib families to identify quantitative trait loci (QTL) affecting milk production and conformation traits using the granddaughter design. The sires of the two studied families were related as sire and son and had 96 and 212 sons respectively. A total of 221 microsatellite loci were scored in both families. Statistical analysis was performed usi...

Genetic diversity is prerequisite for any crop improvement program as it helps in the development of superior recombinants. Fifty Malaysian upland rice accessions were evaluated for 12 growth traits, yield and yield components. All of the traits were significant and highly significant among the accessions. The higher magnitudes of genotypic and phenotypic coefficients of variation were recorded...

the current study investigated the effect of short-term selection for four week body weight (bw) on performance of divergent lines of japanese quail and their crosses. the mean of bw at hatching time, one, two, three and four week oldand bw at sexual maturity time, age at sexual maturity, number of eggs (from 50 to 100 days old), mean of egg weight, percentage of fertility and hatchability in e...

the aims of the present study were to propose apolymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphismpcr-rflp genotyping method for the ay_376689:c.773c>t single nucleotide polymorphism snp of the equine prkag3 gene, related to muscle performance, as well as to characterize this snp and a second polymorphism, aawr_02017454:g.121684t>c of the spata1 gene, related to male fertility, i...

People can accurately infer others' traits and group memberships across several domains. We examined heterosexual women's accuracy in judging male sexual orientation across the fertility cycle (Study 1) and found that women's accuracy was significantly greater the nearer they were to peak ovulation. In contrast, women's accuracy was not related to their fertility when they judged the sexual ori...

The promise of genomic selection is accurate prediction of the genetic potential of animals from their genotypes. Simple DNA tests might replace low-accuracy predictions for expensive or lowly heritable measures of puberty and fertility based on performance and pedigree. Knowing with some certainty which DNA variants (e.g., SNP) affect puberty and fertility is the best way to fulfill the promis...

The purpose of this review is to define possible breeding objectives for Southern African beef cattle farmers and to review different means of expressing genetic reproductive merit. The breeding objective considered was to maximize the number of calves born or weaned for a given number of cows in a herd under prevailing environmental and management conditions. This is a complex trait that has m...

The objective of the study was to assess the dimensionality of seven linear traits (body condition score, body stature, body length, heart girth, navel height, body depth and flank circumference) in Nguni cows using factor analysis and indicate the relationship between the extracted latent variables and calving interval (CI) and age at first calving (AFC). The traits were measured between Decem...