Photoperiod, and not high ambient temperature, appears to be the major cause of seasonal infertility in pigs. Attempts to counter depressed fertility during summer by cooling sows are often unsuccessful. In contrast, artificially reducing daylength during summer shortened the wean-to-oestrus interval of a commercial sow herd by 18d to 5.7d. A similar programme also improved boar fertility. Howe...

introduction lori sheep is one of the most important breeds in iran that is mostly bred in lorestan province, north-east of khuzestan and some areas of ilam provinces. the name of this breed is derived from lori tribe, which is one of the major nomadic groups of zagros mountain in western areas of iran. lori sheep is resistant to mountain conditions and hot and dry plains. this sheep breed has ...

Food legumes play an important role in attaining both food and nutritional security along with sustainable agricultural production for the well-being of humans globally. The various traits of economic importance in legume crops are complex and quantitative in nature, which are governed by quantitative trait loci (QTLs). Mapping of quantitative traits is a tedious and costly process, however, a ...

Doñana National Park marshes, in South West Spain, extents over 27,000 ha of the Gualdalquivir River estuary, on the Atlantic Ocean coast. The site undergoes a yearly cycle of inundation in autumn and drying out during the spring season. While flooded, Doñana wetlands create a crucial passage, breeding and wintering site for more than half million waterfowl each year, including about 150 bird s...

UNLABELLED BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVESI: Transovarial transmission of dengue virus in the Aedes vectors is now a well-documented phenomenon reported from many parts of the endemic areas in the world, which played an important role in initiating and maintaining the outbreak in human populations. This study investigated the factors affecting breeding habitats and the relationship with transovarial de...

BACKGROUND Dengue is rapidly becoming established in north-east India and spreading, on account of rapid urbanization and population movement, with reported morbidity and attributable death cases. This study aims to determine the seasonal abundance of Aedes (Stegomyia) albopictus and Aedes (Stegomyia) aegypti in Guwahati metropolis and suburban settlements; to characterize the breeding resource...

Sixty-four zebu cows, comprised mainly of Bunaji cattle aged between 3 and 7 years old, were involved in an intensive artificial insemination programme. The study was conducted during the breeding period (May-October), and cows were inseminated with freshly prepared Friesian semen when they stood to be mounted by the vasectomised bull or herdmates. Fertility was measured by serum progesterone (...

The success and sustainability of an avian breeding programme depend on managing productive and unproductive pairs. Given that each breeding season can be of immeasurable importance, it is critical to resolve pair fertility issues quickly. Such problems are traditionally diagnosed through behavioural observations, egg lay history and hatch rates, with a decision to re-pair generally taking one ...

Selection of high yielding genotypes to be carried over to subsequent selection cycles in a breeding programme can sometimes be accomplished using a suitable index of secondary traits that may be relatively less sensitive to genotype-by-environment interactions than yield. We used the concept of correlated response to selection to measure the relative efficiency of nine selection indices. The r...

In animal breeding, knowledge of the genetic properties of the traits we are interested in is the first prerequisite in establishing a selection programme. Unless we are concerned with traits controlled by single or few genes, in which case we are generally more interested in gene frequencies, estimation of genetic parameters is synonymous with the estimation of variance components. In this con...