Why is this trait I like getting worse in the breeding programme?
The short answer: because the trait you like is not part of the breeding objective and, therefore, has not an economic weight assigned to it. And if it doesn’t have an economic weight it has 0 (zero)...
View ArticleAre PhDs a pyramid scheme?
If you are a professor in academia you are supposed to form/train new PhDs. In the past, those new PhDs would go to other universities and then train new PhDs, and their PhD students would go to other...
View ArticleHave you visited the trials?
I was having a chat with analysts that just had a project dumped on their lap. They were questioning previous analyses as complex and were thinking of doing something much simpler and effective to...
View ArticleWhy are you complicating the analysis?
Progeny trials (or progeny testing or genetic tests or whatever you call them) are a real money pit. They are super useful, with many functions(*) but they are expensive as hell. Their establishment,...
View ArticleThere is value in better explanations
I am often fascinated by people who can explain something that I already know but in a *much better* way. For example, Howie Hua is great at looking at mathematical issues (geometric mean, in this...
View ArticleHaving a peek at sheep breeding
One of the cool things about Quantitative Genetics is that it works everywhere. As a forester, I work with trees and my analyses reflect that, accounting for the biological constraints of our species...
View ArticleBreeding trade-offs
On one side, it is obvious what we should do: increase any of the values in the numerator (selection intensity, accuracy and genetic variability) or reduce the denominator (how long it takes us to...
View ArticleThe best part of LinkedIn
After “professional Twitter’s” demise I joined LinkedIn (less than a year ago) to keep in touch with colleagues. Overall, I like the posts from people I chose to follow and dislike most of the...
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When heritability is high but the phenotype is dominated by the environment
I was reading a LinkedIn post that said “heritability is the extent to which differences in observed phenotypes can be attributed to genetic differences”. There is this idea floating around assuming...
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Time for correlations
A few posts ago I was talking about heritabilities (like here) and it’s time to say something about genetic correlations. This is how I explain correlations to myself or in meetings with colleagues....
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