An ABC estimate of pedigree error rate: application in dog, sheep and cattle breeds

On the basis of correlations between pairwise individual genealogical kinship coefficients and allele sharing distances computed from genotyping data, we propose an approximate Bayesian computation (ABC) approach to assess pedigree file reliability through gene-dropping simulations. We explore the features of the method using simulated data sets and show precision increases with the number of markers. An application is further made with five dog breeds, four sheep breeds and one cattle breed raised in France and displaying various characteristics and population sizes, using microsatellite or SNP markers. Depending on the breeds, pedigree error estimations range between 1% and 9% in dog breeds, 1% and 10% in sheep breeds and 4% in cattle breeds.