In highly variable environments, conditions can be so stressful in some years that entire populations forgo reproduction in favor of higher likelihood of surviving to breed in future years. In two out of five years, Clark's nutcrackers (Nucifraga Columbiana) in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem exhibited population-wide failure to breed. Clark's nutcrackers at the study site experienced substan...

Background The concept of Marker Assisted Selection (MAS) is rapidly evolving in animal and plant breeding. With the advent of high throughput molecular technology, numerous molecular markers distributed throughout the whole genome can be produced to characterize many genetic entries involving new perspectives in methodology of selection. An important research activity has begun in the animal w...

Maximization of genetic gain in forest tree breeding programs is contingent on the accuracy of the predicted breeding values and precision of the estimated genetic parameters. We investigated the effect of the combined use of contemporary pedigree information and genomic relatedness estimates on the accuracy of predicted breeding values and precision of estimated genetic parameters, as well as ...

Plant biotechnology is a field of scientific research in which rapid advances have been made in recent years, and which appears to have much potential for further development. Numerous opportunities for using biotechnology in plant breeding have been identified, some of which might be appropriate for the improvement of crops in developing countries. In this conference we will focus on forest tr...

Efforts to develop genetic marker based approaches to breeding forest trees began in the late 1980s. Approaches based on first generation of markers, allozymes, were not feasible due to the very limited number of markers (<50). The first DNA-based markers, RFLPs, brought more hope as moderately dense genetic maps could be constructed to scan the genome and map quantitative trait loci (QTLs). Th...