Multi-breed genomic evaluation for tropical beef cattle when no pedigree information is available.

ABSTRACT:

Background

It has been challenging to implement genomic selection in multi-breed tropical beef cattle populations. If commercial (often crossbred) animals could be used in the reference population for these genomic evaluations, this could allow for very large reference populations. In tropical beef systems, such animals often have no pedigree information. Here we investigate potential models for such data, using marker heterozygosity (to model heterosis) and breed composition derived from genetic markers, as covariates in the model. Models treated breed effects as either fixed or random, and included genomic best linear unbiased prediction (GBLUP) and BayesR. A tropically-adapted beef cattle dataset of 29,391 purebred, crossbred and composite commercial animals was used to evaluate

SUBMITTER: Hayes BJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10578004 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature