Do ASBVs Have a Future?
Chad Taylor, Mumblebone
Chad Taylor responds to industry leaders who discourage ASBVs, explaining why visual selection alone can't see through environmental noise.
Interviewer: Chad, some of the leaders in your industry discourage the use of ASBVs. How do you see their future?
Chad Taylor: It'd be interesting to define "leader" in the first place, I think. I think ignoring science should be done at your own peril. Genetic gain cannot be made visually only. Visual plays a very important role, but there are so many traits we can't see visually, and so many visual traits that are also skewed by environmental noise, like being born a twin, for example.
ASBVs make it quite simple to see through that noise. That's why we use them, and that's why we go to a lot of effort to produce breeding values. Breeding values of high accuracy are how people can take that environmental noise out of the equation and make accurate breeding decisions.
