The very hungry caterpillar

Ever since attempting to grow our own vegetables with my young children I have been amazed by the decimation caused by caterpillars on crops. At the time my family were engaging in our first gardening experiments and initially we were all delighted to see the range of butterflies in the garden, clustering around a new [...]

ASReml spawns new thoughts on salmon traits

A report published in September 2009 suggested that farm-reared fish accounted for 50% of the world’ consumption of fish. This rise in aquaculture production isn’t much of a surprise when you consider the emphasis on the health-giving properties of fish (particularly Omega-3 from oily fish) and the subsequent encouragement for people to eat more oily fish; and it’s certainly good news for the aquaculture producers across the world.

Zoo breeding: Sumatran tiger secrets unravelled using ASReml

Zoos have come a long way since the original Zoological Garden in Regent’s Park, London. They are not just a collection of animals for people to look and scientists to study; evolving into centres of research and play a vital part in wildlife conservation and protection. Certainly in the UK you would be hard pushed [...]

Understanding reproductive performance

GenStat is known as the data analysis tool for biological sciences, its original development and history stems from the data analysis needs of agricultural researchers based at Rothamsted Research.
A study, published in the Journal of Tropical Animal Health and Production, has been looking at determining the true reproductive and productive potential of the Matou goat, [...]

KWS value precision and security

For centuries people have been breeding plants, trying to fine-tune individual plants to obtain or change a particular trait.  Today plant breeders look at addressing concerns such as drought or environment tolerance, pesticide, herbicide, fungi or bacteria tolerance, improving nutritional value or increasing yields. This, by definition, ranges from “classical” propagation techniques to the modern [...]

Scientific Computing review GenStat

Statistics and genetics package features very nifty tools for life scientists
Review by John A. Wass, Ph.D.
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The Getting Started manual describes this software as “…a complete and comprehensive statistics package…” but, actually, there is a lot more to it. Most packages these days have a variety of statistical tests with diagnostics and options, graphics, data handling [...]

Scientific Computing World reviews GenStat 11th Edition

“GenStat is one of those packages with a reliable and road mapped programme of regular updates. GenStat upgrades have never been less than thorough, stable, significant and workmanlike progressions for one of the industry’s most serious packages; this is no exception.” So says Felix Grant.
He goes on to comment on the 26 new procedures in [...]

Individual Herd Heritability Estimates using ASReml

Herd heritability is an important issue in animal breeding; it measures the genetic and environmental influences on the development of a specific quantitative trait. Big words, with big meanings….but for cattle breeders it’s important to understand which aspects of the cattle are influenced by genetics and which by environmental factors. Understanding the genetic similarity between [...]

Strategic Grazing using Reml

Farming strategies started way back with crop rotation which helped to prevent the soil being drained of all nutrients through over farming by one plant. Times have moved on as technology does and we’ve entered a more complex world of pesticides, herbicides, fertiliser and new crop development. As the world’s population grows the demand for [...]

Protecting the potato

Destruction of crops by nematodes is one of the biggest problems facing farmers throughout the world. Crop yields can be significantly affected as well as the marketability of the crop. And potatoes, as a root crop, are one of the most common plants under threat from nematodes. Add to this the threat of plant pathogens, [...]