Genetic Improvement of Livestock and Poultry

The book presents conventional and modern breeding technologies in the vital areas of animal breeding, to stimulate more research, and to rapidly pass such modern techniques to scientific community. Various conventional breeding technologies used for selection and faster multiplication of superior cattle and buffalo germplasm have contributed significantly to increase in milk production, which were mainly due to the technologies developed in the areas of quantitative genetics and reproductive biology. These included methodologies for selection of females based upon their expected producing ability and young males based on the performance of progeny. Emerging developments in the areas of molecular marker systems in animals, genome maps, methods of detecting Quantitative Trait Loci (QTL) linkages, Marker Assisted Selection (MAS) etc., are latest tools to be used in breeding programmes for enhancing the rate of genetic progress. These modern techniques could be of great help for those traits, for which the conventional technologies have limitations in their use. Therefore, integration of molecular markers with conventional breeding technologies involving pedigree and phenotypic information are probable future breeding tools for genetic improvement of livestock and poultry.