A review on the concept of inbreeding and its impact on livestock

Inbreeding is the breeding between more closely related animals than the average relationship of animals within the population of interest and shares a common ancestry for the last five to six generations. Though it develops inbred lines, prepotent progenies and unmasks and removes recessive deleterious alleles from the population, it is found to reduce the reproductive, fitness and survival performances of offspring due to the inbreeding depression. The more negative outcomes of inbreeding than the positive ones have evolved various ways of avoiding inbreeding. However, it is unavoidable and may occur at the farmers’ level during selective breeding programmes. Therefore, it is advised to use the optimum breeding strategies to minimize the rate of inbreeding to within the sustainable levels.