Gender-based Selection Strategy for Genomic Selection

摘要

Genomic selection is a technique that breeders use to select plant or animal individuals to mate and produce new generations of species. The conventional selection approach was to select individuals that are either observed or predicted to be the best based on the assumption that parents with better phenotypes will produce better children. A major limitation of this approach is its focus on the short-term genetic gains at the cost of genetic diversity and long-term growth potential. Recently, several new genomic selection approaches were proposed to maximize the long-term potential, but they were not effective in achieving the potential that was preserved in the short-term. We propose a gender-based selection strategy, which was inspired by how two genders of wild animals take different roles in fighting for food and caring for their offspring. Our selection approach selects individuals with the highest short-term achievement as male, and then select individuals that are the most complementary to the male as their female partners to emphasize the probability to produce outstanding offspring in the long term. We will present simulation results that compare the performance of the new approach against the state-of-the-art approaches in the literature.