Why the old is not yet new

The idea of using economically defined breeding objectives is 80 years old.BLUP is 70 years old, R and Python are over 30 years old, techniques for analyzing large numbers of markers are 25 years old. And still you’ll find many breeding programmes that are not using some or all of these tools.

What is relevant is when these tools are economically and technically feasible to be used. For some breeding programmes this is just happening now. Moreover, even now your use can be suboptimal because of software issues. Most software can’t integrate the complex models we need for MET and genomics when we have large numbers of genotyped individuals.

Most crop breeding programmes don’t have economic weights for their traits. Many are not yet using animal model BLUP. Even fewer have operational access to genomic data. There is a lot to be done. 😉