The paper briefly reviews the main steps of animal breeding starting from livestock domestication. The
major cultural changes in biology comprehension during XIX and XX centuries are reported with some
emphasis on the meaning of the infinitesimal model interpreting quantitative phenotypes. Genomic analysis,
dominant on the scenes since the beginning of this century, is explored in a wider way. Genomic selection,
production traceability and association between economic traits and specific regions of genome are briefly
discussed
