Selection Index Theory

Abstract

Previous chapters have emphasized the prediction of breeding values of parents based on the performance of their offspring. In practice these predicted breeding values are used to select the very best parents to carry forward in a breeding program and to select parents to retain in the production population (e.g. by roguing parents with low predicted breeding values from seed orchards). It is also often necessary to select among the individual offspring resulting from the matings among many parents. Here the objective is to select among individual plants or animals. These forward selections are then retained in the breeding program and possibly put into a production population (e.g. grafted into a seed orchard). The task is to rank all individuals available for selection according to some selection criterion so that those with the highest values of the criterion can be selected.