Technical note: Rapid calculation of genomic evaluations for new animals

Area of Science:

• Animal Breeding and Genetics
• Genomic Evaluation Methods
• Quantitative Genetics

Background:

• Official genomic evaluations are typically released monthly.
• Producers require timely genetic information for decision-making.
• Genotyping laboratories face workload peaks at evaluation release dates.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a method for generating preliminary genomic evaluations.
• To enable daily or weekly genomic evaluations before official monthly releases.
• To assess the accuracy and benefits of preliminary genomic evaluations.

Main Methods:

• Developed a method using newly genotyped animals and SNP effects from previous evaluations.
• Minimized computation by omitting reliability and inbreeding calculations.
• Utilized fixed weights for combining genomic and traditional data.

Main Results:

• Correlations between preliminary and official evaluations exceeded 0.99 for most Holstein traits.
• Lower correlations were observed in breeds with smaller population sizes.
• The method allows earlier access to genomic data.

Conclusions:

• Preliminary genomic evaluations can be accurately generated weekly or daily.
• This method benefits producers through earlier culling decisions.
• Workloads for genotyping labs become more uniform throughout the month.