A professor of livestock genomics with the University of Alberta says the elusive trait of disease resilience in livestock can be more easily identified by through the use of genomics.
Scientists working in partnership with Swine Innovation Porc are developing new tools which use genomics enable the selection of breeding stock for disease resilience.
Dr. Graham Plastow, a Professor of Livestock Genomics with the University of Alberta, says, because resilience is such a difficult trait to identify, the use of genomics is particularly attractive.
Dr. Graham Plastow-University of Alberta:
The first step is being able to measure the phenotypes we're interested in and so we've been developing tools that can get that data on pigs.
What we're interested in is, because we're talking about genetic improvement, we're really wanting to find predictors where we can measure different components of an animal in a high health environment and then be able to predict how their offspring are going to respond when they're at the commercial level.
That's one aspect.
Source : Farmscape