Multiple EndUses
In addition to matings targeted at long-term nucleus gains, you might want to make matings to give progeny that are targeted towards other uses/markets/customers such as:
- To target the production of seedstock for sale to a range of customers with differing
needs: eg.
- Terminal versus maternal bulls
- A specific disease important to some but not to others
- High versus low demand for marbling in the carcass
- Targeting a specific set of “trait leaders” in dairy cattle.
- Customers in different environments
- To contribute to a multiplier tier(s), possibly with a different breeding objective(s)
- To target a specific product niche
- To make resources for specific testing in some way – e.g. high versus low EBV groups for a specific trait, or balancing experimental treatments for relationships and/or trait merit.
- To prepare for a likely splitting of the breeding population into separate lines, each with their own trait profile and each to be diversity-managed independently.
- Development of sire and dam lines for eventual crossing, to exploit trait complementarity and possibly heterosis.
- To set up a Genomic Reference population that is diverse yet highly related to the target population for gEBVs.
Generally, you will want to use the best stock for the nucleus (most suited to the nucleus objective). And genetic diversity will generally be important only in the nucleus (although you will have the option to manage diversity in different parts of your population(s)). So, in some ways, this is all about targeting the head of the breeding program at the nucleus, and the tail of the program somewhat towards diverse customer needs.
However, in using Multiple EndUses you are not committing to the different directions you might choose. What you are doing is “loading the dice” in a manner that will give you better opportunities when deciding the fate of the resulting progeny – almost always after they have records of their own, and their EBVs have deviated from their parent-average predictions. You should be able to make groups for selection, disseminations and culling that are better suited to these different destinations. See Kinghorn et al. (2015) for an example.
Multiple EndUse Videos
Section titled “Multiple EndUse Videos”There are two videos, both using the MateSel Legacy version: