Integration of molecular and quantitative information in sheep and goat industry breeding programmes

Molecular information is finding increasing use in sheep and goat breeding programs, as systems become available to make use of this information and the cost of obtaining the information declines. Genetic markers have been used for parentage verification or determination, for product tracing or brand protection, and for assisting selection decisions for production or breeding stock. The predominant uses of markers in selection have been in selecting for scrapie resistance, high prolificacy and for increased size of higher value muscles. Most of these applications of selection have placed preferential emphasis on the favourable gene variant, and quantitative information is used to select within genotype. The sophisticated use of molecular and quantitative information on an industry-wide scale will require robust systems that can cope with imperfect data as well as development of selection indices to take full advantage of the information. The prospect for further increases in the use of molecular information looks bright.