Understanding genomic selection in poultry breeding

Abstract

Genomic selection is a recent paradigm shift for both animal and plant breeding. The availability of hundreds of thousands of markers covering the entire genome has provided an opportunity to increase the accuracy of estimated breeding values, better manage genetic variation and shorten generation intervals. This paper summarises how these new technologies can be applied to poultry breeding programmes to enhance genetic improvement.

Keywords::

• genomic selection
• poultry breeding

Acknowledgements

This study was supported by Hy-Line Int., the EW group, and Agriculture and Food Research Initiative competitive grants 2009-35205-05100 and 2010-65205-20341 from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture Animal Genome Programme. Genomic selection project was led by Iowa State University (J.C.M. Dekkers, D.J. Garrick, R. Fernando, S. Lamont, A. Wolc, D. Habier) and Hy-Line International (N.P. O'Sullivan, P. Settar, J. Arango, J.E. Fulton).