Incorporating Molecular Genetic Information in Genetic Improvement Programs for Livestock

Substantial advances have been made in the genetic improvement of agriculturally important animal and plant populations through artificial selection on quantitative traits. Most of this selection has been on observable phenotype, without knowledge of the genetic architecture of the selected characteristics, which is treated as a black box, with no knowledge of the number of genes that affect the trait, let alone of the effects of each gene or their locations in the genome.