ggroups: an R package for pedigree and genetic groups data.

Area of Science:

• Quantitative genetics
• Bioinformatics
• Statistical computing

Background:

• R is a versatile statistical software with a vast repository of open-source packages.
• Pedigree data is crucial for understanding population structure and predicting animal genetic merit.
• The concept of genetic groups addresses inequalities in average genetic merits among unknown parent groups.

Purpose of the Study:

• Introduce the ggroups R package for pedigree data analysis.
• Provide functions for calculating additive and dominance genetic relationship matrices and their inverses.
• Facilitate the computation of the genetic group contribution matrix (Q).

Main Methods:

• Development of an R package named ggroups.
• Implementation of functions for pedigree checking and processing.
• Inclusion of computationally optimized and parallelized functions for matrix calculations.

Main Results:

• The ggroups package provides functions for calculating additive and dominance relationship matrices and their inverses.
• Functions for computing the genetic group contribution matrix (Q) are included.
• Sample data outputs demonstrate the package's utility and performance.

Conclusions:

• The ggroups R package is a free, open-source tool for quantitative geneticists and ecologists.
• It offers comprehensive functions for managing pedigree data and computing related matrices.
• Computationally optimized functions are available for handling large-scale datasets.