Towards genomics in Finnish beef cattle

Abstract

Beef cattle breeding scheme in Finland has been developed for each breed independently without data for F1-animals. The purpose of this work was to combine single breed evaluations into multibreed evaluation combining data for all animals. The multibreed model effects are mainly the same as the single breed model effects, supplemented however with some improvements. For instance, the new model considers heterosis effects and defines breed more accurately than the previous model. Variance components for genetic and residual effects were defined as a weighted average of single breed variance components using animal’s breed proportions as weight. There was a high correlation between breeding values of multi-breed and single-breed evaluation models for purebred animals. In all breeds and the traits, the correlations were higher for direct genetic effects and lower for maternal effects.