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Multi-breed genomic evaluations for 1 million beef cattle in Ireland
Key stakeholders in Ireland (Irish Cattle Breeding Federation, Teagasc and the Department of Agriculture and Marine) are currently developing multi-breed genomic evaluations for some 1 million beef cattle. The project is co-funded through the EU’s Rural Development Program, with the overall objective of increasing rates of genetic gain for key traits related to profitability and environmental sustainability within the Irish suckler beef herd. A total of €300m has been allocated to the project over the 6-year period (2015-2020), of which some 15% will be allocated towards the cost of genotyping and related genomic evaluations.
Phase 1 of the project is underway, with 300k beef animals genotyped in 2015. This is in addition to a further 100k animal’s which were genotyped in 2013 and 2014, as part of an initial Irish government and industry funded initiative to help establish the required infra-structure (phenotypes and genotypes) for large scale multi-breed genomic evaluations. All animals have been genotyped on the International Dairy and Beef chip (IDB), with the latest version (the IDBv3) being a customised 54k chip developed in conjunction with Teagasc and Illumina Inc. It is anticipated that a further 300k animals/year will be genotyped in 2016 and 2017, resulting in a total of 1 million beef animals required for routine genomic evaluations by end 2017. Phase 2 of the project, will result in a further 1 million animals being genotyped in 2018-2020, bringing the total requirement for routine genomic evaluations to in excess of 2 million animals.
Analysis to-date has been based on a sub-sample of some 100k sires and cows with reliable evaluations for key profit traits. Single-step genomic evaluations using Mix99 software have been applied to the dataset, with an almost doubling of reliability from the current 20% to almost 40% for individual traits and the relevant economic indexes. Initial feedback from industry has been very positive, with an expectation that the evaluations will become official from August 2016, after which we anticipate running routine evaluations, based on the increasing genotype and phenotype data every 2-3 months.
Keywords: Genomics, beef cattle, multibreed.