What is Animal Breeding?

Animal breeding is a branch of animal science that addresses the genetic evaluation of livestock. The scientific theory of animal breeding incorporates principles of population genetics, quantitative genetics, statistics, biology, and recently molecular genomics. Practical animal breeding is the application of these principles to improve the efficiency of production in farm animals. At the UFS, animal breeding is one of the three disciplines of Animal Science.

The primary focus of this group is the genetic evaluation of domestic livestock and several wildlife species using state-of-the-art mixed model methodology and genomic information to identify superior animals for selection purposes. The integration of phenotypic and genomic information for the prediction of more accurate breeding values form the main thrust of the teaching, research, and extension programmes of this group.