Sparks is a tool original created by the Zoo world and developed for livestock with the help of Dr Andy Dell.
It is designed to help maintain genetic diversity within the breed, without increasing inbreeding and can be used to help find potential mates. It is based on pedigrees and calculates the degree of relationship between animals.
It uses the kinship between every possible pairing in the population, and suggests those mating which are recommend, or to be avoided.
Green – Recommended matings
These mate pairs of very similar mean kinship, producing progeny of lower inbreeding coefficient than the breed specific threshold. Green mating reduce the risk of rarer genetics in the population being lost through Genetic Drift and increase genetically advantageous options for breeders in the future.
Yellow – Best of the Rest
These mate pairs of less similar mean kinship produce progeny of lower inbreeding coefficient than the breed specific threshold
Orange - Not Recommended
These mate pairs of very `different mean kinship but still producing progeny of lower inbreeding coefficient than the breed specific threshold. Orange matings risk loss of rarer genetics through swamping by more common genes in the process called Genetic Drift.
Red – Definitely Avoid
Red matings will produce progeny of greater inbreeding coefficient than the breed specific threshold. These increase the chance of deleterious (damaging) genes being expressed and lead to the breed becoming more homozygous (2 identical copies of an allele at any one position in the DNA chain). High levels of inbreeding are also associated with infertility; embryonic/ mid and late term pregnancy loss; premature mortality and an ever growing number of undesirable traits being described in the literature.
