By Carol Beuchat PhD The biggest challenge facing purebred dog breeders now and in the future is the management of genetic disorders. Over the last few decades, inbreeding and loss of genetic diversity have resulted in an increase in the expression of recessive alleles as well as inbreeding depression, which affects things like fertility, puppy mortality, and lifespan. Producing healthy dogs in the future will require management of a breed's most precious resource, its gene pool, so that breede [...]
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