Approximation of the Structural Forms of the Variances and Covariances between Molecular and Phenotypic Breeding Values

Abstract Text:

The ability of genomic information to predict an animal’s genetic merit depends on the number of animals whose genotypes went into training, the reliability of the EBV for those animals, and genetic distance between the animals used in training and the animal being evaluated. A set of approximate variances and covariances between molecular and phenotypic breeding values were derived which incorporate the above features. The approximations indicate that the variance of a molecular breeding value and its covariance with an animal’s breeding value decrease as a linear function of that animal’s distance from training. In addition, the approximate covariance between an animal’s molecular breeding value and EBV provides a means of adjusting for the fact that the same phenotypic information was used both to train the molecular breeding value and to predict its phenotypic EBV.

Keywords:

molecular breeding value

genomic selection

genetics