Comparison of joint and purebred genomic evaluation in the French multi-breed dairy goat population

Abstract Text: The 677 bucks progeny tested and the 148 candidates from French Alpine and Saanen dairy goats were genotyped with the Illumina goat SNP50 Bead-Chip. Using a GBLUP single step approach, three models were used in this study: 1) a multi-breed model in which Alpine and Saanen were considered as the same breed, 2) a per-breed model with one evaluation per breed and 3) a multiple trait model in which a trait in Alpine was genetically correlated (ρ=0, ρ=0.99 or ρ estimated) to the same trait in Saanen. Prediction quality assessed by cross validation were better using single step than two step approach. The three models used performed similarly except for biases. Model accuracies of candidates were improved by using single step approach and were better using multi-breed model than other ones.

Keywords: Dairy goat, Genomic selection, Multi-breed