This chapter outlines some of the basic principles in genetics and attempts to illustrate the link between genes and the performance of individual farm animals, or populations of them.

This chapter provides information on the status quo of molecular assessment of prokaryotes, fungi and yeast. The recent developments in sequencing approaches to assess the diversity of cultured and not-as-yet-cultured organisms and metagenomes, together with the most widely applied algorithms for...

This chapter describes the role of genetics on disease resistance and susceptibility, inbreeding, genetic diversity and other complex traits in horses.

This chapter focuses on botany, origin and history, uses, cultivars and breeding, genetic diversity, nomenclature, classification, and species description of cucumbers, melons, squash, pumpkins, watermelons and their related species.

This chapter discusses the taxonomy, including genetic diversity, commercial importance and breeding of papaya. It also deals with botany, i.e. plant architecture and the different parts of the plant. The plant development is also described, starting from germination, seedling and juvenile growth...

This chapter focuses on analysing factors that affect the predictive ability of genomic prediction (GS) in rice, and an overview of the proof-of-concept studies conducted during the past 5 years with the aim of providing rice breeders with tailored GS methods and tools. These studies involved two...

This chapter focuses on quantitative genetics, screening of germplasm collection at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, genetic diversity, genetic variation of provitamin A content in maize. Inheritance, heritability, genotype-by-environment for carotenoid content, population...

Recently, the expansion of genomic sequencing and genome editing are enabling progress directly in crops themselves. This is key since, while it is highly tractable, Arabidopsis thaliana is a model dicot, and so it will always be important to assess how relevant it is to crop plants. Nevertheless,...

Plant pathogens seldom fit into a classical definition of a population since many of these organisms reproduce both via sexual and clonal reproduction. One working definition is a set of organisms, defined in time and space. Genotypic and gene diversity can be measured with phenotypic and genotypic ...

This chapter outlines the scientific and development impacts of forage diversity conservation, characterization and distribution work under the international network of forage collections in CGIAR. The focus for the future will continue to be on the core operations that are essential to conserve...