Justification for setting the individual animal genotype call rate threshold at eighty-five percent

Data quality of SNP arrays impacts the accuracy and precision of downstream data analyses. One such quality control measure often imposed is a threshold on individual animal call rate. Different call rate thresholds have been applied across studies; little is known, however, about the impact of these thresholds on the quality of the genotype data. The objective of the present study was to investigate the effect of different call rate thresholds on the integrity of the genotypes but also to quantify the contribution of different factors to the variability in animal call rate. Data included 142,342 samples genotyped on a custom Illumina genotype panel from 141,591 dairy and beef cattle; the number of Illumina SNP on the panel was 14,371. The mean animal call rate across all samples was 99.09%; 487 animals had both a low call rate (<99%) and a subsequent high call rate (≥99%) after resampling and regenotyping. Several factors were associated ( < 0.001) with individual call rate including animal sex, the sampling herd, the date of genotyping, the genotyping plate, and the plate well. The genotype and allele concordance between the genotypes of the 487 low- and high-call rate individuals improved at a diminishing rate as mean animal call rate increased. Mean genotype and allele concordance rates of 0.987 and 0.997, respectively, existed when animal call rate was between 85 and 90%, increasing to 0.998 and 0.999, respectively, when animal call rate was between 95 and <99%. The mean within-animal allele concordance rate of rare variants (i.e., minor allele frequency < 0.05) between low and high genotype call rate animals increased when animal call rate improved; an allele concordance rate of 1.00 was achieved when animal call rate was between 85 and <99%. The accuracy of imputation of the nonobserved genotypes in the low-call rate animals improved as animal call rate increased; the mean genotype concordance rate of the imputed nonobserved SNP was 0.41 when animal call rate was <40% but increased to 0.95 when animal call rate was between 95 and <99%. Parentage validation, determined by the count of opposing homozygotes in a parent-progeny pair, was unreliable when animal call rate was <85%. Therefore, to ensure the provision of high-quality genotypes while also considering the cost and inconvenience of resampling and regenotyping, we suggest a minimum animal call rate threshold of 85%.