Animal Breeding and Genetics

Animal breeding aims at a well-designed and targeted development of farm animal populations, so that it is possible to produce animal products with healthy animals under the expected conditions while meeting the economic requirements.

Breeding programs from the construction kit

Breeding programs are complex processes that are planned and implemented by breeding associations or breeding companies with the aim of achieving long-term breeding progress in breeding populations towards a desired breeding goal. We were able to show that even the most complex breeding programs can be assembled from surprisingly few elementary modules, as in a construction kit. On this basis, the R package MoBPS (for Modular Breeding Program Simulator) was developed, with which arbitrarily complex breeding programs can be displayed and simulated. A graphical user interface was provided at www.mobps.de to allow intuitive input and efficient evaluation of breeding programs. The approach developed in this way is used intensively in research and teaching, but also in cooperation with breeding companies.

New thesis topics available!

The working group Animal Breeding offers a new selection of topics on different breeding issues in various animal species.