Developing the method of estimating genetic similarity between populations

An existing method for measuring genetic similarity between populations was further developed to include information from ancestors. Genetic similarity is the extent of genetic exchange or the amount of the genetic material that is shared between the gene pools of two populations. Genetic correlations and the number of exchanged individuals have been used traditionally as indicators of genetic similarity. However, genetic correlations are trait-dependent and under the influence of genotype by environment interaction and the number of exchanged individuals do not show the extent of spreading genes from exchanged individuals into two populations. The present method uses the number of progenies from the shared individuals in the two populations without using the parental information of the shared individuals. With the new method, most of the pedigree information is capture without the need to use a relationship matrix. Therefore, it is easy to implement and has a low computational demand. This new method can be used in studies of biodiversity or screening of populations for which genetic correlations are going to be estimated.