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Animal Breeding Methods and Sustainability

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Sustainable Food Production

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After domestication, animals were selected in different environments and for different traits leading to the modern breeds. Long before the appearance of the science called now as “Genetics,” animal breeding had been practiced by humans following intuitive criteria, less efficient than the scientific ones, but criteria that had provided success along many generations of selection [1]. The lack of a theory explaining inheritance slowed down animal breeding for many years, but with the rediscovery of Mendel’s rules at the beginning of the twentieth century and the development of quantitative genetics in the 1920s and 1930s animal breeding had the tools needed for its development. Animal breeding methods were developed in the 1930s and 1940s, and the first animal breeding companies and cooperatives started in using scientific...

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Abbreviations

Breed:

A population of animals with common morphological characteristics that is recognized as a breed by the administration, by a breeders association, or by other groups of people.

Best linear unbiased prediction (BLUP):

It is the most common statistical method used in breeding evaluation.

Quantitative trait locus (QTL):

A gene having influence in a quantitative trait.

Markers:

Fragments of the DNA molecule for which their position is known.

Response to selection:

Genetic progress.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Animal Science and Technology, Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, 22012, Valencia, 46071, Spain

    Dr. Agustin Blasco

Authors
  1. Dr. Agustin Blasco
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Agustin Blasco .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department de Produccio Vegetal i Ciencia Forestal, Universitat de Lleida/ICREA, Lleida, Spain

    Paul Christou

  2. Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats (ICREA), Barcelona, Spain

    Paul Christou

  3. Department of Crop and Forest Sciences, University of Lleida, Lleida, Spain

    Roxana Savin

  4. University of New England, Marine Science Center, Biddeford, ME, USA

    Barry A. Costa-Pierce

  5. Department of Animal and Dairy Science Breeding and Genetics, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA

    Ignacy Misztal

  6. The Roslin Institute and Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies, Division of Developmental Biology, University of Edinburgh, Midlothian, Scotland, UK

    C. Bruce A. Whitelaw

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Blasco, A. (2013). Animal Breeding Methods and Sustainability . In: Christou, P., Savin, R., Costa-Pierce, B.A., Misztal, I., Whitelaw, C.B.A. (eds) Sustainable Food Production. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5797-8_333

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