Explore the vast range of titles available.

Tree breeders face the problem of negative correlations between wood properties and growth traits. It is necessary to overcome this difficulty in order to obtain promising genotypes. The selection index is one of the helpful tools in this process, because it allows multiple features of interest to be selected. In this study, a multiple trait selection index for Khasi pine (Pinus kesiya Royle ex Gordon) grown in Malawi was developed. Data on wood properties and growth traits were collected from six families of P. kesiya at the age of 30 years. The breeding objective was defined in terms of wood stiffness, wood strength and volume. Selection traits included in the index were wood stiffness (MoE), wood strength (MoR), volume (Vol.), wood density (WD), and diameter at breast height (DBH). The index was termed as I T = − 80.36 M o E − 14.60 M o R + 132.07 V o l . + 4858.09 W D − 7.56 D B H . The accuracy of the index was 98.8% and the correlation between the index and the aggregate breeding objective was 0.994. A genetic gain of 16.7% for volume, 14.8% for wood stiffness and 13.2% for wood strength would be expected from a standardized 10% selection intensity. Therefore, application of the developed selection index is necessary in order to increase the efficiency of the Pinus kesiya breeding programme in Malawi.

Wild rice ( Zizania spp.), an aquatic grass belonging to the subfamily Gramineae, has a high economic value. Zizania provides food (such as grains and vegetables), a habitat for wild animals, and paper-making pulps, possesses certain medicinal values, and helps control water eutrophication. Zizania is an ideal resource for expanding and enriching a rice breeding gene bank to naturally preserve valuable characteristics lost during domestication. With the Z. latifolia and Z. palustris genomes completely sequenced, fundamental achievements have been made toward understanding the origin and domestication, as well as the genetic basis of important agronomic traits of this genus, substantially accelerating the domestication of this wild plant. The present review summarizes the research results on the edible history, economic value, domestication, breeding, omics research, and important genes of Z. latifolia and Z. palustris over the past decades. These findings broaden the collective understanding of Zizania domestication and breeding, furthering human domestication, improvement, and long-term sustainability of wild plant cultivation.

Stone fruits (Prunus spp.) occupy a pivotal position in global fruit production due to their significant nutritional profile and distinctive organoleptic characteristics. Contemporary orchard systems are undergoing transformation through innovative cultivation approaches, notably high-density dwarfing systems, greenhouse cultivation, agri-tech integration, and simplified management. As a crucial agronomic component in modern stone fruit cultivation, rootstock systems confer multi-benefits including enhanced environmental resilience, improved scion productivity, superior fruit quality, controlled vigor, and dwarfing capacity. While the majority of European apple orchards have transitioned to dwarfing rootstock systems, achieving substantial gains in productivity and profitability, stone fruit cultivation lags significantly due to the key gaps in prunus rootstock development, including genetic complexity, extended evaluation cycles, clonal propagation barriers, and limited research programs. Urgent innovation is required to address these challenges in rootstock breeding to meet the demand of sustainable stone fruit production. This review systematically examines strategic breeding objectives and innovative molecular methodologies in prunus rootstock development, with particular emphasis on marker-assisted selection and genomic prediction technologies. We provide a comprehensive synthesis of breeding achievements across major commercial rootstock cultivars, while proposing forward-looking research strategies incorporating CRISPR-based genome editing and multi-omics approaches. The synthesized insights establish a theoretical pathway for advancing rootstock genetic improvement and sustainable orchard management practices in stone fruit cultivation systems.

Somali smallholders depend on four indigenous cattle ecotypes; however, their breeding decisions have never been quantified. We conducted a participatory cross-sectional survey of 320 households drawn from four districts in southern Somalia Luuq, Baidoa, Jowhar and Afgooye, each dominated by the following indigenous ecotypes: Boran, Surqa, Dawara and Gasara. A semi-structured questionnaire, administered individually to each household head, captured herd demographics, production goals, trait preferences and mating management. The majority of respondents were men (55%), lived in large households (mean ≈10 people) and kept herds averaging 30 head. Livelihood security dominated production objectives: cash income, milk and meat were prioritised over manure or draught. Bull ownership exceeded 88% and mating was largely uncontrolled, with 53%–76% of bulls servicing both owner and neighbour herds. Despite this, clear phenotypic selection was practised: body size and milk yield topped the criteria for cows, while body size, coat colour and growth dominated the criteria for bulls. Body-size indices ranged from 0.212 to 0.379 for cows and from 0.185 to 0.298 for bulls. Up to 51% of keepers castrate bulls, mainly for fattening or mating control. Significant differences (P < 0.001) among the four ecotypes in bull service patterns, replacement sources and castration motives underline the need for ecotype-specific programmes. This study provides the first systematic baseline on Somali cattle breeding and shows that farmer-centred programmes can pair simple trait indices with community bull management to increase productivity while meeting FAO conservation-through-use targets for local genetic resources.

Although food from grazed animals is increasingly sought by consumers because of perceived animal welfare advantages, grazing systems provide the farmer and the animal with unique challenges. The system is dependent almost daily on the climate for feed supply, with the importation of large amounts of feed from off farm, and associated labour and mechanisation costs, sometimes reducing economic viability. Furthermore, the cow may have to walk long distances and be able to harvest feed efficiently in a highly competitive environment because of the need for high levels of pasture utilisation. She must, also, be: (1) highly fertile, with a requirement for pregnancy within ~80 days post-calving; (2) 'easy care', because of the need for the management of large herds with limited labour; (3) able to walk long distances; and (4) robust to changes in feed supply and quality, so that short-term nutritional insults do not unduly influence her production and reproduction cycles. These are very different and are in addition to demands placed on cows in housed systems offered pre-made mixed rations. Furthermore, additional demands in environmental sustainability and animal welfare, in conjunction with the need for greater system-level biological efficiency (i.e. 'sustainable intensification'), will add to the 'robustness' requirements of cows in the future. Increasingly, there is evidence that certain genotypes of cows perform better or worse in grazing systems, indicating a genotype×environment interaction. This has led to the development of tailored breeding objectives within countries for important heritable traits to maximise the profitability and sustainability of their production system. To date, these breeding objectives have focussed on the more easily measured traits and those of highest relative economic importance. In the future, there will be greater emphasis on more difficult to measure traits that are important to the quality of life of the animal in each production system and to reduce the system's environmental footprint.

The study aimed to assess the breeding goals, selection criteria and reproductive performance of indigenous sheep in west Wallaga zone, Ethiopia. A qualitative survey approach through questionnaire administration was used to collect data. The analysis primarily involved descriptive statistics and chi-square tests. Based on index values, sheep were primarily produced for income generation, followed by meat production and saving, but with different ranking orders among the study areas. Results of this study showed that sheep milk was not produced throughout the year across the study areas. The findings also revealed that uncontrolled mating alongside communal grazing and access to water points was the most prevalent sheep breeding practices. Overall appearance, coat colour and growth rate for the breeding rams and growth rate, age at first sexual maturity and lambing interval for ewes were the most selection criteria in all study districts. The overall mean (±SE) age at first lambing, reproductive life span, litter size and average lifetime crop density were 14.68 ± 0.02 months, 9.8 ± 0.16 years, 8.83 ± 0.44 and 11.7 ± 0.30, respectively, which were significantly (P < 0.05) different among the districts. Hence, farmers' indigenous knowledge needs to be considered in designing sustainable breeding strategy to improve productivity of sheep in the study areas.

Successful implementation of breeding program requires understanding and accommodation of selection criteria. The objective of this study was to investigate the breeding objectives and selection criteria of farmers' in northwestern Ethiopia. Two ranking methods, own-flock and group-animal, were used. In the first technique, 150 goat keepers were chosen and asked to rank breeding does in their flock as the First-, Second- and Third-Best and Inferior. Farmers explained why they ranked in that order. From the rated does, body measurements and life histories were collected. In the second technique, twenty breeding bucks and twenty breeding does were chosen at random, ear-tagged, and brought to a central station. Animals of same sex were randomly assigned to five groups. Ten farmers, who have not known the animals, ranked the goats in each group as first, second and third and fourth, giving reasons for their ranking. After the first round of ranking, the farmers were then provided with history of each goat and asked whether they would reconsider their ranking. This was iterated ten times until a person covered all groups. In the own-flock ranking, twining ability, body size and kidding interval were the most preferred attributes for selecting does. Does chosen as the First-, Second- and Third-Best had significantly higher body measurements than the Inferior ones. In group-animal ranking, goat keepers however generally focused on body size, conformation and coat color. Simultaneous use of both own-flock and group-animal ranking methods is advisable to identify breeding objectives and selection criteria of traditional goat keepers.

Miscanthus has potential as a biomass crop but the development of varieties that are consistently superior to the natural hybrid M. × giganteus has been challenging, presumably because of strong G × E interactions and poor knowledge of the complex genetic architectures of traits underlying biomass productivity and climatic adaptation. While linkage and association mapping studies are starting to generate long lists of candidate regions and even individual genes, it seems unlikely that this information can be translated into effective marker-assisted selection for the needs of breeding programmes. Genomic selection has emerged as a viable alternative, and prediction accuracies are moderate across a range of phenological and morphometric traits in Miscanthus, though relatively low for biomass yield per se. We have previously proposed a combination of index selection and genomic prediction as a way of overcoming the limitations imposed by the inherent complexity of biomass yield. Here we extend this approach and illustrate its potential to achieve multiple breeding targets simultaneously, in the absence of a priori knowledge about their relative economic importance, while also monitoring correlated selection responses for non-target traits. We evaluate two hypothetical scenarios of increasing biomass yield by 20 % within a single round of selection. In the first scenario, this is achieved in combination with delaying flowering by 44 d (roughly 20 %), whereas, in the second, increased yield is targeted jointly with reduced lignin (-5 %) and increased cellulose (+5 %) content, relative to current average levels in the breeding population. In both scenarios, the objectives were achieved efficiently (selection intensities corresponding to keeping the best 20 and 4 % of genotypes, respectively). However, the outcomes were strikingly different in terms of correlated responses, and the relative economic values (i.e. value per unit of change in each trait compared with that for biomass yield) of secondary traits included in selection indices varied considerably. Although these calculations rely on multiple assumptions, they highlight the need to evaluate breeding objectives and explicitly consider correlated responses in silico, prior to committing extensive resources. The proposed approach is broadly applicable for this purpose and can readily incorporate high-throughput phenotyping data as part of integrated breeding platforms.

Common bean ( Phaseolus vulgaris L.) improvement programs have been successful using conventional breeding methods to accomplish a wide array of important objectives. Specific achievements include the extension of range of adaptation of the crop, the development of cultivars with enhanced levels of disease and pest resistance and breeding lines that possess greater tolerance to drought. The most effective breeding method depends on the expression and inheritance of the trait to be selected and the target environment. Many bean improvement programs use molecular markers to facilitate cultivar development. In fact, several recent germplasm releases have used molecular markers to introgress and or pyramid major genes and QTL for disease resistance. Related species ( P. coccineus and P. acultifolius ) via interspecific hybridizations remain an important albeit long-term source for resistance to economically important diseases. Slow progress has been made in the improvement of traits such as adaptation to low soil fertility and tolerance to high levels of soluble Al in the soil using conventional breeding methods. The inability to directly measure root traits and the importance of genotype × environment interaction complicate the selection of these traits. In addition, symbiotic relationships with Rhizobium and mycorrhiza need to be taken into consideration when selecting for enhanced biological N fixation and greater or more efficient acquisition of soil P. Genomic examination of complex traits such as these should help bean breeders devise more effective selection strategies. As integration of genomics in plant breeding advances, the challenge will be to develop molecular tools that also benefit breeding programs in developing countries. Transgenic breeding methods for bean improvement are not well defined, nor efficient, as beans are recalcitrant to regeneration from cell cultures. Moreover, if issues related to consumer acceptance of GMOs cannot be resolved, traits such as herbicide tolerance in transgenic bean cultivars which would help farmers reduce production costs and decrease soil erosion will remain unrealized.

This study was conducted to identify farmers’ breeding objectives and trait preferences for indigenous cattle in north-west Ethiopia. Multistage purposive and random sampling techniques were used to select study districts, and smallholder farmers. The required data were collected through structured questionnaires from 320 households, personal observations, and focus group discussions. The chi-square (χ2) test, least squares mean, and ranking index were statistical methods used for data analysis. The least squares mean analysis showed a difference (p < 0.001) and the mean herd size was 10.9 heads. Based on ranking index results, milk production (0.35) and draught power (0.25) were the main cattle production purpose/objectives of farmers. The chi-square (χ2) test results of mating practices showed a significant difference (p < 0.001) and 63.8% of farmers used controlled mating. According to the ranking index result, large body size (0.35), colour (0.26), and good traction (0.18) were considered the most important traits in selecting a breeding bull. High milk yield (0.4), colour (0.19), large body size (0.16), and calf growth (0.13) were the preferred traits/criterias for cow selection. Prioritizing farmer trait preference and breeding objectives in this study was critical for the design and implementation of breeding programmes.