ABSTRACT
Human curiosity about the sexual orientation of living things has a long history. For thousands of years, livestock owners wanted to find a suitable way to predict the sex of the progeny to be born for their herds on their farm. Thanks to the development of semen sexing technology, animal breeding has undergone a revolution, which allows farmers to control the sex of their offspring. Sexed semen enhances overall productivity and also assists farmers in meeting the rising demand for high-quality dairy animals by enabling them to selectively generate seedstock female calves. The technology is a one-stop solution to enhance breed improvement especially in a country like Ethiopia where 97 percent of the cattle population is indigenous, which is not selected for milk production and results in undernourishment for animal source origin diet, including milk and meat. The benefits of using sexed semen include sex selection, improved genetic selection, enhanced breeding effectiveness, better control over herd dynamics, greater financial gains, environmental sustainability, and improved animal welfare. Hence, with the finding of this study, an overall result of a 98% response rate 95% female skewness, and 79% conception rate was recorded after being inseminated with sexed semen. The finding of the response rate is closer to the results reported by another researcher, while the average conception rate is comparatively higher. This could be due to careful animal selection, the use of fertile quality semen, proper heat detection, and inseminating at an optimum window of time. In general, from the piece of this study, it is possible to foresee and conclude that the adoption and application of sexed semen technology is a groundbreaking and game-changer technology for the dairy industry in a country like Ethiopia, which overcomes the limitations of improved crossbred dairy cattle, replacement heifers, and high milk prices on the one hand, a shortage of grazing land, ...

ABSTRACT
The emergence of heterosis is a crucial marker of hybrid potential in rapeseed breeding for both hybrid and open-pollinated cultivars. However, testing the combining ability of the parents in the field consumes a great deal of manpower. An efficient way to evaluate heterosis and heritability is to use a line×tester analysis. An experiment was performed in 2022 in the research area of department of Plant Breeding and Genetics, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad. Line×tester analysis was performed with ten lines and three testers for the development of thirty F1 crosses. It was used to estimate heritability and heterosis of various fatty acids related traits as: oil contents, protein contents, glucosinolate contents, and erucic acid content. For this, selected better performer lines (high yield) and poor performer (low-yield) testers from ongoing research were crossed and the data were recorded for different fatty acids-related traits. The recorded data were subjected to Analysis of Variance followed by estimation of heterosis and narrow sense and broad sense heritability. Using three alternative forms of heterosis estimates—heterosis over mid parent, heterosis over better parent, and heterosis over standard check—the thirty F1 hybrids that developed were assessed, along with one check variety (Chakwal-second). Crosses 40980×26240 (for oil), 40979×26240 (for glucosinolate contents), 40978×26240 (for erucic acid contents) had positive and significant heterosis over the commercial hybrids for the studied traits. High narrow sense heritability was observed for erucic acid contents followed by protein contents and glucosinolate contents. The hybrid variety in rapeseed might be developed using the crossings 40978×26240, 40979×26240, and 40980×26240.

ABSTRACT
Abiotic stresses such as salt stress, high temperature and others can affect seed germination, germination speed, seedling growth in the field and final yield. But genetic variation exists among tomato germplasm response to adverse maternal environments. One hundred one Recombinant Inbred Lines (RILs) tomato along two parents were replicated twice to teste seed germination and detect QTLs under salt stress, high temperature and control conditions. Strong significant (P<0.001) difference observed among RILs for all germination parameters under three growth conditions, indicating that high genetic variation observed for seed germination. Germination was more delayed at -0.5 MPa of NaCl, salt stress than high temperature and control. Recombinant Inbred Line of 291 showed the highest germination rate and better performed for all germination traits under salt stress, high temperature and control conditions. QTL analyzed showed at least 1 to 4 significant QTLs per trait identified. Furthermore, four significant co-located QTLs were found on chromosomes 9 and 11, each of two controlling for early set and speed of germination traits, each ranging from 9.9 % to 13.2 % per traits under salt and high temperature stress conditions. This might be suggesting that the common base of genes control for multiple traits. The study demonstrated that some derived RILs showed resilience to germinate under abiotic stresses conditions. Further study is required on co-located QTL through fine mapping, validation and will provide valuable insights into the genetics base of seed tomato for germination under salt stress and high temperature conditions.