Exploring the inclusion of genomic information and metafounders in Latxa dairy sheep genetic evaluations

The availability of genomic marker panels has made possible more precise estimates of breeding values. Sheep breeding programs are implementing genomic selection. In Latxa dairy sheep breed, a previous study using pre-corrected data and a small number of genotyped animals did not show a clear advantage of genomic selection. The objective of the present study was to ascertain the possible benefits of GS for the Latxa breed based on more data than before and using better tools, in particular single-step genomic BLUP using metafounders to model missing pedigree. Goodness of prediction of pedigree and genomic evaluations was analyzed by cross-validation comparing predictions of young rams using whole and partial (truncated) data sets. The results showed that with the current available data, genetic and genomic evaluations have the same accuracy. Contrary to the previous study, predictions were nearly unbiased, which shows the advantage of using single-step genomic BLUP. However, genomic information did not yield more precise evaluations. This could be explained by the small number of sibs in the young rams.