As described in Dickerson (1970), what are the major components that contribute to overall economic production efficiency?

Dickerson (1978) illustrates the contributions of several different stages of production to biological or economic efficiency. How do the relative contributions of these stages of production contribute to biological or economic efficiency differ among the various industries?

Dickerson (1978) also illustrates the possible improvement in production efficiency that may occur if a 20% (or substantial theoretical) improvement would occur in number of offspring marketed per female, relative growth rate or %Fat. Discuss the potential for achieving these changes in the various industries.

Given an X'X matrix and an X'Y vector from a SAS-GLM run what do the individual numbers in X'X and X'Y represent.

Describe one major contribution of each of the following: Bakewell, Mendel, Darwin, Fisher, Wright, Lush.

Describe the general structure of genetic improvement in a livestock industry and the extent to which various industries fit this general structure.

Discuss the genetic change that would occur in commercial herds that purchase breeding stock from seedstock suppliers that are a. making genetic improvement and b. making no genetic improvement.

Using the path diagram of direct and maternal genetic components, illustrate how the correlation between performance of the dam and performance of her offspring is obtained.

Using a path diagram, illustrate the correlation among half sibs.

Explain the full meaning of the Hardy-Weinberg Law

Describe the impact that genetic drift could have on populations of various sizes.

Why might migration be described as the most powerful of the forces to change gene frequency? What has to be true for migration to be powerful?

Describe the factors that influence long term response to selection.

Describe the factors that influence short term response to selection.

What effect does proper use of adjustment factors have on heritability?

Upon reviewing several estimates of heritability for a given trait, you discover that they are not all alike. Explain why this might be expected.

Why are some performance traits obtained at a weight-constant point while others are obtained at an age constant point? Give some examples of each.

Explain (graph will be provided) everything that can be observed and learned from the Figure in the Falconer selection experiment that shows response from each of the six replicates of high, low and control selection for body weight in mice.

Explain why selection for ovulation rate may not achieve the desired response in litter size.

What are some potential selection alternatives to direct selection for litter size if the desired result is larger litters of pigs?

What are some reasons that long term (30+) generations may begin to plateau?

Why might selection for body weight show asymmetrical response when there are lines selected for large vs small body weight?

Describe the advantages that an animal model has, in comparison with a sire model, for obtaining EPDs. What further advantages are provided by use of a multi-trait animal model?

Describe the concept of base point as it applies to information available in sire summaries.

Describe genetic trend bias, non-random mating bias and sequential culling bias.

Use a path diagram to illustrate the purpose of a 3 trait selection index.

Describe the pieces of information that are necessary to construct a selection index.

Describe the differing purposes of the indexes recommended by the National Swine Improvement Federation.

Explain and illustrate the meaning of the "intensity of selection"

Describe the concept of correlated response and explain why indirect selection might be better than direct selection in some circumstances.

What is an EPD? Where do they come from?

Provide a detailed description of genotype x environment interaction with at least 3 different examples.

Describe alternative breeding strategies for genotype x environment interactions with fixed vs random environments. Give examples.

You analyze a set of data with several sires and both male and female offspring. Your analysis of variance detects a significant genotype x environment interaction. You rank the sires based upon male and female offspring and find a rank correlation of .75. You also compute a genetic correlation of sires of calves of males vs females and the genetic correlation is .65. Explain the meaning of these results.

Describe the materials, methods and the results of the experiment with lines of Herefords evaluated in Montana and Florida.

Scientists at the Meat Animal Research Center studied several thousand calves in several breeds and found the following regressions of offspring performance on sire EPD: BW=1.09, WW =79, YW=1.44 and WW of calves from daughters on Milk EPD = .95. What, if anything, do these regression coefficients say about the validity of EPDs?

Tell something about the careers of :C.R. Henderson, Gordon Dickerson, Larry Benyshek, Larry Cundiff, Rodger Johnson, L.N. Hazel, and Lauren Christian.

What are several of the key events that have lead to the astounding improvement in genetic merit for milk yield in dairy cattle? What biological factors make the level of achieved improvement so unlikely?

Describe the purpose and accomplishments of the STAGES program.

What is the purpose of the National Dairy Herd Improvement Program and what are some of the features of the program.

What is the current approach to obtaining across breed EPDs in beef cattle. What are the advantages and some of the limitations of the approach?

How was the metal backfat probe first developed?