Re-introduction programs rely on reproductively sound individuals and high offspring survival once captively bred species are released into their natural habitat. Some species involved in captive breeding programs reproduce poorly: one prominent example is the cheetah (Acinonyx jubatus). Here we use the cheetah as a case study to test predictions from all current hypotheses explaining this phen...

the important of ostrich breeding have been increased in the iran as other country around the world. lack of sexual dimorphism in many species of birds including ostrich (struthio camelus), making it difficult to differentiate between males and females, especially in young birds. this can be problematic for breeding programs. blood samples from randomly chicks in the first days were collected a...

AUSTRALIAN sugarcane breeding programs in the past have maintained fairly separate breeding and selection programs targeting different regions. This structuring implied an assumption that genotype x region interactions are important relative to genotype x environment interactions within regions, but this had not been tested. A research project was initiated in 1997 to help address this issue an...

Despite their success in boosting cereals production overall, the Green Revolution programs of the 1950s and 1960s were often criticized for failing to achieve their declared aim of alleviating world hunger. Most critics argued that the programs had produced a technology unsuited to the needs of small peasant farmers. This paper explores why such inappropriate technology might have been develop...

Chickens, as well as other animals, have the ability to change their behavior (behavioral plasticity) and physiology (physiological plasticity) based on the costs and benefits to fit their environment (adaptation). Through natural selection, the population preserves and accumulates traits that are beneficial and rejects those that are detrimental in their prevailing environments. The surviving ...

ELECTION indexes have been proposed in animal and plant breeding programs S as a criterion for selection when certain quantitative characters are considered. Such characters present particular difficulty in selection programs since heritable variations are often masked by nonheritable variations. Investigations have demonstrated that a selection index based on a number of measurements could be ...

Background Growing demand for food and fiber, and a rapidly changing climate will require that plant breeders accelerate the improvement of germplasm adapted to new sources of biotic and abiotic stress. In trees, the threat from climate change is more evident and the solutions more challenging than in any other plant species, due to the complexity and cost of breeding programs, and the long bre...