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How to improve genomic predictions in small populations
This paper reviews strategies and methods to improve accuracies of genomic predictions by influencing one or both of the main factors: 1. Improve or increase genomic connections to phenotypic records. 2. Models and strategies to focus genomic predictions on markers closer to the causative variants.
Combining populations into a joint reference population result in high improvements when combining populations of the same breed and diminishes as the genetic distance between populations increase. For distantly related breeds sophisticated Bayesian variable selection models in combination with denser markers sets or functional subsets of markers is needed. This is expected to be further improved by the efficient use of sequence information. In addition predictions can be improved by the use phenotypes of genotyped and non-genotyped cows directly. For a small population the optimal approach will combine the above components.
Keywords:
genomic prediction, across breeds, cow phenotypes
