Separate estimates of breeding value can be combined using meta-analysis if a combined analysis of all data is not possible or efficient. Computation is fast but not exact if the reliabilities of the separate estimates are approximate, if the extent of overlap of the datasets is unknown, or if selection has occurred across the datasets. Selection index methods were used to combine single-trait ...

Genome wide selection and new methods of maize breeding The objectives of this work were to verify the accuracy of the Genome Wide Selection method (GWS) in the maize breeding for nutritional stress conditions and propose new breeding methods based on GWS. The efficiency of two components of use of nitrogen and phosphorus (absorption and utilization) was estimated in 41 single-cross hybrids ass...

Pongola Game Reserve in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa is a small (12,959 ha private land and 1,943 ha state land) fenced reserve with a large elephant population (79 individuals). Landowners are increasingly concerned about elephant impact on vegetation in the reserve and thus steps must be made to ensure the sustainable management of this elephant population. In 2008 Disney Corporation funded va...

The behavioral effects of the immunocontraceptive agent porcine zona pellucida (PZP) have not been adequately studied. Important managerial decisions for several species, including the wild horse (Equus caballus), have been based on this limited research. We studied 30 horses on Shackleford Banks, North Carolina, USA to determine the effects of PZP contraception on female fidelity to the harem ...

This article considers the relationship between patenting and plant variety rights protection, through a detailed analysis of the recent determination by the Extended Board of Appeal of the European Patent Office that methods for breeding broccoli and tomatoes were not patentable. It concludes that the right to patent agricultural innovations is increasingly located within a political context.

Marketing decision making tasks require the acquisition of e cient decision rules from noisy questionnaire data. Unlike popular learning-from-example methods, in such tasks, we must interpret the characteristics of the data without clear features of the data nor pre-determined evaluation criteria. The problem is how domain experts get simple, easy-to-understand, and accurate knowledge from nois...

Four breeding methods viz. pedigree method (PM), single pod descent (SPD), with selection (SPDS) and bulk (BM) were compared for maintaining variability in the population advanced generations using simple sequence repeats (SSR) markers. The F4:7 lines through different from six crosses evaluated number of unique retained each at a similarity coefficient ? 0.875. Eighteen polymorphic SSR markers...