The wheel on the axis of science rotates every couple of years with new innovative basic ideas that revolutionize traditional thinking and direct scientists to areas unimaginable to them in the past. Improvements in poultry and other livestock species have been pursued through empirical statistical approaches with underlying genetic principles. Since the publication of Poultry Breeding and Genetics (1990), new ideas have emerged in molecular genetics, computation strategies and bioinformatics with concurrent breeding-related problems in poultry. It was the combination of the rotating axis of science coupled with emerging new problems in poultry breeding that led to the birth of this book. This book represents the first complete integration of the state of the art in quantitative
and molecular genetics as applied to poultry breeding. Our approach is first to define problems encountered in poultry breeding in ‘Problems and Issues Associated with Poultry Breeding’. Then methods to address these issues are examined, including both quantitative and molecular genetics, which are simply different tools to address these problems with differing strengths and weakness. Quantitative approaches are examined in ‘Breeding Strategies and Objectives’ while molecular approaches and integration with quantitative ones are examined in ‘Use of Genomics and Bioinformatics in Poultry’.
Coverage of genomics includes structural, comparative and functional. Use of transgenic technology in poultry is also examined. Transgenic technologies offer the promise of being able to address issues by creating new genetic variability, rather than being restricted to existing variation as with quantitative and genomics methods. In addition, transgenic technology can develop new uses for egg products, particularly as a bioreactor for other applications. One of the greatest issues in the poultry industry is that of disease resistance and transmission. A special section is devoted to the genetics of disease resistance. We feel that we have achieved our goal of producing an outstanding book, with the top scientists in their field addressing each subtopic. Although the field of molecular genetics is
progressing rapidly, we feel the issues and methods outlined in this book will be with us for a long time. We thank all the authors for their outstanding contributions to what will surely be a standard of excellence against which all future books will be measured. We also wish to thank Tim Hardwick (CABI Publishing) for giving us the opportunity to put this book together, and Marian Kaiser for her kind assistance and technical skills in editing the final drafts.