History of the Goat and Modern Versus Old Strategies to Enhance the Genetic Performance

Abstract

This chapter was designed to figure out the basic knowledge about domestication, adaptation and immigration of goat breeds, with a spotlight on modern versus old strategies to enhance genetic performance along with recognizing their role in the livestock production industry with a special focus on the position adaptive selection in view of the new high technologies of investigating genome and building of selective comparison between goat breeds. Also, this chapter focused on goat production throughout the world, the vital role played by goats and the biodiversity of goat genetic resources and the special characteristics of goats under different conditions. In addition, this chapter is concerned with modern strategies to enhance goat genetic performance, including different molecular tools, besides mentioning the outcomes of utilizing advanced molecular tools in goat breeding, as well as identification of candidate genes related to important economic traits, detection of signatures of selection and quantitative trait loci, applied genome-wide association studies and the methodology of genomic selection, where the recent findings of genomic studies on goats are listed in a logical and sequential fashion.