Vol. 6, Issue 12 (2017)

Author(s):
Priyanka Priyadarshini, Dr. Chinmoy Mishra, Dr. Gangadhar Nayak, Krutanjali Swain and Sumitra Panigrahi

Abstract:
Traditional marker-assisted selection (MAS) did not result in a widespread use of DNA information in animal breeding. The main reason was that the traits of interest in livestock production were much more complex than expected: they were determined by thousands of genes with small effects on phenotype. These effects were usually too small to be statistically significant and so were ignored. Genomic selection (GS) assumes that all markers might be linked to a gene affecting the trait and concentrates on estimating their effect rather than testing its significance. Three technological breakthroughs resulted in the current wide-spread use of DNA information in animal breeding: the development of the genomic selection technology, the discovery of massive numbers of genetic markers (single nucleotide polymorphisms; SNPs), and high-throughput technology to genotype animals for (hundreds of) thousands of SNPs in a cost-effective manner. This selection method can be used in genetic improvement and genomic prediction in livestock and poultry breeding.