IMPROVING STOCK

Taranaki Daily News, 5 January 1935, Page 7

IMPROVING STOCK

DIFFICULTIES OF SELECTION. ADVANCEMENT OF PRODUCTION. Difficulties attending the improvement of livestock by selection were described recently by Mr. A. D. Buchanan Smith, of the Edinburgh Institute of Animal Genetics. There is no doubt, Mr. Buchanan Smith said, that selection can greatly increase the production of stock, but as the productivity of improved stock rises, so does the rate of improvement decrease. He thought that future information of scientific value regarding the inheritance of milk yield and quality would only be obtained by the control of environment and nutrition to the greatest possible extent, so that comparisons may be straight-forward. The problem is not the simple one of selection for one particular object. In striving to obtain a definite race of high producers, we desire to obtain a multitude of characters - , each of which is dependent upon a multitude of genes. Hence the need for more fundamental knowledge. ■ In the meantime, Mr. Buchanan Smith urged a continuance of existing selection methods (with the re-enforcement of the recent remarkable .rediscovery of the progeny test). On the whole it would give good results. “When, as was bound to happen, there was a popular reaction to the progeny test—not because it had failed to give results, but because those results have not been as great as the advocates of the test are now promisingthen will be the time when the science of genetics will be able to make a further definite contribution to the subject, provided, that the foundations for such work have been well and truly laid.” _