On the problem of optimal mating in animal breeding

Abstract

One of the animal breeding strategies to increase both the health of the herd and the economic production gains is the mating system. Algorithms found in the literature to maximize mating gains rely on metaheuristics such as genetic algorithms, arguing about the inherent difficulty of finding an optimal solution to the mating problem. In this paper, we investigate the problem of maximizing the expected genetic/economic value of the next herd generation by a mating system strategy. We show that the problem can be solved in polynomial time, regardless of the metric used.