Strategies to Exploit Genetic Variation While Maintaining Diversity

Abstract

How we should manage genetic diversity depends on why we want to manage it. The most generally useful strategy is to maintain variation across the genome, using methods that consider one or more of: population size, population structure, animal selections, mate allocations and information from genetic markers. A key reason to maintain genetic diversity is to facilitate longer-term genetic gains, and this means that most breeding programs need to consider genetic diversity as well as shorter-term genetic gains. This paper discusses these issues, and presents developments in methods to integrate genetic gains, genetic diversity and other issues within breeding programs.