Advances in Breeding of Dairy Cattle

This collection reviews the latest research on dairy cattle genetics and advanced methods of genetic evaluation and selection. The book first assesses the degree of inbreeding and genetic diversity in modern dairy cattle as well as opportunities for crossbreeding. It then goes onto review research on targeting non-production traits such as fertility, feed conversion efficiency and methane emissions as well as resistance to disease. The following chapters in the book then survey the latest techniques and advances in genomic selection (GS) in such areas as functional annotation and use of sequence variants to improve genomic prediction. The book also reviews developments in genetic evaluation (GE), including the use of ssGBLUP and multi-trait across-country evaluation (MACE), and the application of these techniques to breeding progammes. With its distinguished editors and impressive range of expert chapter authors, this will be a standard reference for the dairy science research community and the dairy industry.