Effectiveness of genomic prediction of boar taint components in different Pietrain sired breeding populations

Abstract Text: Marker effects on the boar taint components androstenone and skatole were estimated for 603 Pietrain sired crossbred boars originated from three regionally different populations. Genomic-BLUP was used to calibrate the genomic selection (GS) estimation formula. Accuracy of genomic prediction was assessed by fivefold cross-validation. In a first scenario, estimations were performed across populations, which revealed accuracies of 0.62 to 0.65 for androstenone and skatole. Genomic prediction within each population showed similar accuracies ranging from 0.51 to 0.68. Using boars of the two populations for calibration and animals of the third populations as validation set led to significantly lower accuracies (0.06 to 0.27). We conclude that genomic selection against boar taint using information from commercial crossbreds is promising. However, only low genetic progress can be expected if GS formulas are transferred to genetically deviating pig populations, which are not included in the calibration procedure. 

Keywords:

pig

breed differences

genomic selection