|
Book Reviews | ||
| Number 45 | |||
| Back to Contents | Next | ||
This book is world famous among animal breeders and geneticists. Dr. Jay L. Lush was Professor of Animal Genetics at Iowa State University, Iowa, USA in the period from the 1940s to the 1970s. He was an outstanding expositor of quantitative animal genetics and had a great influence upon the development of this field of genetics both through his understanding of what was then a relatively new discipline and also through his many graduate students.
Dr. Lush's book, The Genetics of Populations was republished some years ago and copies are still available. This is an opportunity to obtain a copy of an influential book at a remarkably modest price - a book which is unlikely to be available elsewhere or later.
Orders may be sent to Ann Shuey, Department of Animal Science, 2255 Kildee Hall, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa 50011-3150, USA. Cheques should be made payable to Iowa State University and shipping charges should be added - which are: $2.50 within the USA and $5.00 internationally. Note that payment cannot be made by credit card or electronic transfer. Overseas buyers must send a bank draft or cashier's cheque. Within the USA personal or university cheques are acceptable. For further information, please contact: ashuey@iastate.edu
This is the seventh volume published by INRA in its series on "Rural Space". The series has the objective of making available research information on aspects of rural development, collected at the local and regional level; including the relationship of the rural and urban components of society in both developed and developing environments. Included in these studies are those referring to human activities linked to it. An important field covered concerns the new areas of action and the functions acknowledged today as being the new role and responsibility of agriculture. These extend from activities referring to the socio-economic part of the rural sector to those linking farming and land use with environmental conservation and management, landscaping, cultural actions and regional values. The book series is intended to inform agricultural professionals and experts involved with what the French call la mise en valeur du territoire which could be inadequately translated into English by "making the best use of the rural territory", teachers, academics, students and journalists. Vissac's book, relates to the "cattle side" of the successful French livestock selection upsurge. There is no better publication to cover the remarkable period in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s which was a true revolution in post-war European animal production.
The author, who was shaped and trained in the traditional French agricultural academic system, has dedicated his life to that modern temple of agriculture and rural research called the Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA). He chaired two of the most avant-guarde departments representing the two extremes of the "intensification scale" of INRA research: Animal Genetics and Agrarian Systems and Development. In addition, Vissac seconded loyally but critically for nearly 20 years Jacques Poly the man who was the father, planner and builder of Animal Science during the last 40 years in France. The story is a true European reference example of what research can do in our modern world when well-planned and efficiently run.
For those of us who knew both men well for decades this book is an acknowledgment from the student to his master and a tangible demonstration of the success of modern livestock farming where knowledge, tradition, empirical and scientific experience but also politics follow a precise Cartesian approach and thinking. Vissac acts here as an interested and involved critical observer and not as a partisan. Cattle farming is seen by the author as the witness and the backbone of France's past agricultural self-subsistence, then as the locomotive of what is known as les trentes glorieuses (the glorious farming years of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s), ending-up today not only as the symbol of production excesses, but also of the re-conquest and successful last minute recovery of rural land space.
To which "cows" does the author refer to when relating the great scientific advances that lead to the development and application of "new" models for animal husbandry and breeding in his country? In fact he gives us an independent view "from the upper balcony", a testimony of an honest man who was present throughout and was involved with France's cattle sector changes over these past 40 years. His narrative includes: the "double muscled" steers, the high yielding Holstein selected only for milk and dominating the dairy sector but also the unfortunate replacement of the well-adapted Flamande and Normande that we recognize today - certainly a little late - for their milk's cheese-making qualities and the solid butterfat contents! He explains with some bitterness the post-war desertification of the countryside that even France's well-known grasp of culture and tradition could not stop; the efforts to sustain scientifically and technically a forceful attempt to obstruct this "bleeding" of the rural areas, then...mad cow's disease!
This book is not only a first-hand and easy-to-read presentation of the impressive scientific advances and experimental results obtained in the INRA context, but also a deep-rooted plea in defense of a systemic and balanced vision of animal agriculture research and application that must bind the research results in reproduction, selection and livestock feeding to the careful and truly sustainable management of rural space and the quality of products linked to origin, tradition and traceability; an optimal combination of local resources and advanced technology.
The author believes, and convinces the reader, that the sum of the collective complex knowledge that leads to what Aristotle of Macedon called a successful "animal generation" can only be built through the confrontation of the knowledge and the power of the various actors involved - livestock farmers, professionals of development, strategists, planners, politicians but also...scientists and academics. He views, somehow, the "cows" as the mirror of our society of which he is the "citizen-researcher" and from which he cannot and should not distance himself! This implies that all parties concerned - individuals and organizations - must be fully and collectively implicated with a "true value" approach to address problems; it is the beliefs and thinking of a serviteur de la société et de l'Etat (a man serving society and the state). After all it is at that pertinent level of action that a collectivity can and must identify what is helpful for the development of the capacities of independence and autonomy to better master and correctly use advance technology versus the uncertainties generated by change.
La loi sur l'élevage, France's now well-known livestock sector legislation planned by Jacques Poly in the early 60s (voted unanimously by both Houses of Parliament and the Senate) developed collectively and forcefully through the wish and will-power of France's animal agricultural establishment, illustrates that such actions must overrun politically preconceived ideas. They remain pertinent and can even meet the back-lash of tragedies such as the "mad-cow" crisis and the recent "foot-and-mouth" epidemic that concerned mainly the UK but also spattered the Continent of Europe.
Following a preface by Bertrand Hervieu, INRA's President, an introduction by the author, a useful foreword addresses the motivations that lie behind this eight-year-long endeavour. The book is divided into five parts, with several chapters in each part; then three short concluding chapters of which is most timely entitled: "The morality of a scientist"!
Part one looks concisely at the past, from domestication to the Renaissance. Then comes an in-depth evaluation of the emergence of the English livestock farming in the 17th and 18th centuries and the "anglomania" of the 19th (the Blackwell saga), followed by a "francomania" that de-facto introduced the continental "euromania": modern selection plans, lean-meat breeds, regional "ecological" approaches and a technocratic vision leading to a "rustic" utopia of scientists moving too far from the land and its realities. The second part is certainly, at least for me, the most interesting as I had the privilege of living with it through its high and low tides. Bertrand Vissac refers to it as the "Convictions and limits of the Trente Glorieuses". He first describes the incursion of the thinking of North American industrialised livestock farming. Then he moves to the origins and empowerment of French zootechnical research that led to the Loi sur l'élevage in 1966; veterinarians and agronomists, biologists and mathematicians, the cultural battle at the university level, the technical progress and the founding fathers; socio-economic original thinking, progeny testing, statistics and mathematical genetics, management and collective enterprise. The concluding chapter is most enlightening even for those that lived through the process and its ups and downs: the milk-beef disequilibrium, the crises of the 70s, the introduction of the production quotas, the globalisation of marketing in the cattle sector, the conjunction of knowledge in the context of institutionalised research. The third part concerns the development of modern experimental designs and the results of experimentation as well as the road leading from experimental analysis to the problems of animal agriculture. The fourth part describes a number of French and non-French mainly African examples and tries to define the problems of the "animal generation" on the margin of the growing power of the "technical empire", the "new " spirit of American ranching and intensification vs. the spirit of an ageing but still very virile rural Europe. The author describes particularly well "the resistance of the mountains and the marginal regions" that did not want to accept their "marginalisation"! "Holsteinization" and the resistance by the adapted high yielding local breeds (the Normande and the Montbeliarde, to mention only these two), the first becoming practically an official doctrine the second depending on the charisma of its leadership for survival. On the one hand the basis of "institutionalised biotechnics" (today it would correspond to "privatised biotechnology"), on the other hand the difficult and painful research options where the human "milieu" must be fully acknowledged! The fifth part corresponds to the author's re-conversion from quantitative biology to sustaining a rural systemic study approach: how to master the "animal generation" in the context of an agrarian systems thinking? Bertrand Vissac concludes with a chapter that is certainly a definition of what became his credo at the end of a versatile and fruitful scientific career; he calls it "the truth of the citizen-researcher": a necessary "contract" between the "nation, the livestock farmers and the scientists"!
The concluding remarks of the book refer to the "morality of the scientist". They confront us with the uncertainties of the down-to-earth honest scientist who knows that he must serve and service the rural community and society at large but never behave as an "international expert" who thinks, above all, policy and politics!
I would like to close the reviewing of Vissac's monumental work by expressing two regrets. The first is that I do not have the time to translate into English this extremely well-documented explanatory and critical recording, of half a century's evolution of livestock raising research. This can only be undertaken by an engaged observer who lived through and participated to this saga that deeply marked Europe's post 2nd World War farming sector but also had extraordinary recognition on the other side of the Atlantic. The second is to lament that Betrand Vissac could only take the cattle sector in consideration. In fact the research and livestock agriculture development work originating in INRA during the Trente Glorieuses, had much more far-reaching effects than beef and dairy farming only. To mention a few selected sectors, there is above all the pioneer genetic selection work on milk sheep - Jacques Poly's own preferred and privileged field of research and application - as well as that of small ruminant and horse reproduction, the dwarf INRA lines and the pig breeding selection experimentation; these are just as meaningful and impressive programs, though probably less spectacular than cattle selection modelling.
Professor Jean Boyazoglu
Aristotle University of Thessalonik
Greece
Detection of quantitative trait loci (QTL) has become a rapidly developing field, promising new insights in the genetic variation underlying traits of interest and thus more effective breeding schemes. The book by J.I. Weller describes the theory of designing experiments and the biometrical methods for estimation of location of QTL's and their effect, as well as their application in marker assisted selection (MAS) and marker assisted introgression.
The book starts with detailed coverage of the historical development in these areas. In the following two chapters the basic biometrical methods for parameter estimation are presented. These are supplemented with a description of experimental designs covering a broad set of scenarios from crosses between inbred lines to out-bred populations. In addition biometrical methods from simple regression analyses to computer intensive likelihood and Bayesian methods are covered. The next chapters consider statistical power, parameter confidence intervals, and optimisation of designs from an economic point of view. Methods for fine mapping are covered in a separate chapter. The next two chapters consider the problems of multiple statistical tests and false positive QTL effects and advantages and complications in multiple trait QTL analysis. The last four chapters consider applications of QTL information. This is initiated with a chapter on elements of breeding schemes, followed by two chapters on marker-assisted selection and one on marker-assisted introgression.
The main emphasis is on QTL detection with no prior knowledge on the location and effect of potential QTL's. To illustrate this it may be noted that the biological aspects of comparative genetic maps across species and candidate genes are ignored. The application of marker - QTL linkage is focused on genetic improvement, increasing the frequency of favourable alleles, either segregating in the population or introduced from another population.
The book is the most complete coverage of this area to date. The book includes 16 well-organised chapters with a clear introduction to the contents of the chapter and in addition each chapter concludes with a short summary, thus helping the reader to locate useful information. The book also supplies introductory chapters to biometrical methods and breeding schemes.
The book is recommended for graduate students and researchers in the field of QTL detection and utilisation as well as people in other areas, especially molecular genetics, with a desire to understand the biometrical challenges of QTL detection and utilization. This book should, despite the title, also have an appeal to plant geneticists working on QTL detection and utilisation, as the book also covers QTL detection in crosses of inbred lines.
Dr. Peer Berg
Senior Scientist, Department of Animal Breeding and Genetics
Danish Institute of Agricultural Sciences, Tjele, Denmark
E-mail: Peer.Berg@agrsci.dk
What a beautiful book! Such an appreciation is often exaggerated; here it is most deserved. This comment does not refer to its aesthetic value for it is not an art book; although the illustrations including 16 coloured pictures are indeed remarkable. But it is a great book in the sense of being very rich in recent scientific data. The scope of the book covers the subject matter from first principles and many components at the biological level; but also it includes philosophical, sociological and moral issues. Amazing progress has been made in recent decades - especially when one looks back thirty or forty years to the time when coloured pencils were used to show the layers of the ectoderm, the endoderm and other gastrulae. The applications in medical and veterinary sciences explain the intense investment in recent years in the beginning of life.
Thus, it was more than a good idea, for the organizers of the Congress "Embryo 2000" held in France in May 2000 under the responsibility of the so-called "Biologie du développement" group chaired by Jacques Martal, to assemble those contributions in this book. In addition, this volume is not simply a compendium of the presentations at the Congress but a real handbook, methodologically compiled to provide the various facets of current knowledge and reflections by 70 of the most distinguished authors in these disciplines.
The titles of the five sections indicate the wide scope covered here:
The length of these sections is unbalanced which is due to the extent of knowledge for each. The first section with six chapters covers new and fundamental notions of development: epigenetic heredity, parental imprinting, maternal control of the first stages of development, totipotency and also explains convincingly the applications such as cloning, transgenesis and cellular therapy.
The second part with three chapters and five authors is more classical in its title and explains in the light of recent data the temporal relationships of development. Two chapters are dedicated to the common origin of the nerve and glial cells on one hand and to the tegument on the other hand serve thus serving as good models of the underlying mechanisms.
The third section presents physiological as well as immunological aspects of the maternal-conceptus dialogue and in particular the paradoxical tolerance of the embryo by the matrix as well as the peculiar physiology of the vascular circulation.
The fourth part with two chapters is dedicated to in-vitro fertilization in humans including current limitations and evokes the delicate problem of assisted hatching of the embryo. A typical human clinical chapter deals also with uterine fibroids and interventional radiology.
Finally, the last section reports a very stimulating debate in the format of a round table on early genetic diagnosis and bioethics. The level of this discussion makes this chapter a solid major reference for all involved in ethical problems of this nature.
In addition to the appropriate diagrams, figures, tables, plus black and white micrographs or colored pictures, all chapters include a list of references. It is difficult to find major defaults or missing facts in this book. However, one may regret that the authors did not address the interesting topic of phyllogenesis in parallel with ontogenesis and embryogenesis; but maybe that would have needed another volume....
While this book is clearly a scientific publication it nevertheless offers a harmonious mix of basic data and clinical approaches in the human and veterinarian fields. It can therefore be recommended as a valuable resource for scientists working in all these fields in addition to students, teachers and all those in civil society who are concerned with issues of humankind at the deepest level.
Professor Michel Thibier
Scientific Counsellor,
Permanent Representative Delegation of France to FAO
Rome, Italy
E-mail: rpfrancefao@interbusiness.it
Next: Publications of Interest