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was also addressed. The conference was man resource with training in both gene- tion from around the world are regularly
largely dominated by statistical genetics tics and statistics to address the complex organized to help Chinese scientists in-
and examples of quantitative traits in ani- problems of genetic dissection of com- teract and collaborate with those from
mals (including humans), although some plex QTs. other parts of the world. A major effort
excellent presentations on plant systems There appears to be a lack of activity in in India is needed to develop centres of
were also made by Qifa Zhang (on het- this area of research in India, where we statistical genetics with emphasis on QG,
erosis), Ed Buckler (on association map- have not been able to keep pace with the both in animal and plant systems.
ping) and Fred Hospital (on marker- recent developments in the field of QG.
assisted selection). It was also interesting There is hardly any school of statistical
to learn that methods of QG (including genetics with workstations having power- 1. Pollak, E., Kempthorne, O., Bailey Jr,
T. B. (eds), Proceedings of the International
QTL analysis and association mapping) ful supercomputers for QG research. The
Conference on Quantitative Genetics, Iowa
can be applied to the study of behav- centres of bioinformatics established so
State University Press, Ames, Iowa, 1977.
ioural traits, genome imprinting (epige- far are more oriented towards genomics 2. Weir, B., Genetics, 1987, 117, 601–602.
netics), copy number variants (CNVs) research rather than QG. Consequently, no 3. Weir, B. S., Eisen, E. J., Goodman, M. M.
and cis-SNPs and heterosis–environment statistical tools for research in the area of and Namkoong, G. (eds), Proceedings of
interactions. The organizers plan to make QG are being developed in India. Also, the Second International Conference on
the videos and presentations of the lec- application of the latest statistical tools Quantitative Genetics, Sinauer Associates,
tures available on the web. for genetic dissection of QTs (developed Sunderland, 1987.
The only criticism which the author elsewhere) in animal/plant systems is being
has about the recent developments in the practised at few centres and that too
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS. I thank Indian
area of QG and the presentations made at rather superficially. The funding agen-
National Science Academy, New Delhi for
ICQG3 is the widening gap between cies in India (ICAR, ICMR, CSIR, DST,
nominating me to visit China under CAS-
animal/plant breeders (including molecu- DBT, etc.) need to take notice of this poor INSA Bilateral Exchange Programme to parti-
lar breeders) and the geneticists on the state of the science of QG in our country cipate in ICQG3.
one hand, and the statisticians on the other. and take remedial measures to improve
There are only few practising animal or the situation. We can certainly learn a
plant breeders, who understand statistics lesson from research activity in our neigh-
underlying the genetic analysis of QTs, bour country, China, where not only high- P. K. Gupta, Molecular Biology Labora-
and still fewer statistical geneticists, who quality research in QG is underway in tory, Ch Charan Singh University, Meerut
ever practice animal and plant breeding. different laboratories, but national and 250 004, India.
Therefore, there is a need to develop hu- international conferences with participa- e-mail: pkgupta36@gmail.com
MEETING REPORT