Technical note: Methods for interim prediction of single-step breeding values for young animals.

Area of Science:

• Animal breeding and genetics
• Quantitative genetics
• Bioinformatics

Background:

• Single-step genomic evaluations integrate diverse data but face computational challenges with large genotyped populations.
• Rapid genomic predictions for young animals are essential for timely selection decisions in breeding programs.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate efficient procedures for predicting breeding values of young genotyped animals.
• To avoid setting up computationally intensive full single-step systems for new genotypes.

Main Methods:

• Approximation methods transmitting information from previous single-step breeding values to young animals.
• Utilizing genomic relationships or marker-based models for information transmission.
• Testing procedures on real data from the German-Austrian Fleckvieh genomic evaluation.

Main Results:

• Correlations between approximated and full single-step predictions averaged 0.9932 for the best method.
• The best approximation method achieved high accuracy across 23 conformation traits.
• Approximation systems using the number of markers showed strong performance.

Conclusions:

• Prediction of single-step breeding values for young animals can be accurately approximated.
• Efficient approximation methods reduce computational burden without significant accuracy loss.
• These methods facilitate faster genomic predictions for young animals in breeding programs.