WEEK-4-Population Size, Inbreeding, Random Genetic Drift and Maintenance of Genetic Quality
• An important aspect of genetic biotechnology is not only improvement of performance, but also the maintenance of genetic and stock quality by avoiding phenomena such as inbreeding.
•The effects of inbreeding; reduced rate of growth, viability, survival and reproductive performance and increased biochemical disorders and deformities from lethal and sub- lethal recessive alleles, as well as bilateral asymmetry.
• Random genetic drift is closely related to founder effect. Allele frequencies change or drift in random fashion because of low population numbers. Random genetic drift results in losses of alleles or genes that are present at low frequencies in the population.