Assessment of Genomic Prediction Accuracy for Meat Quality Traits in Hanwoo Cattle

In beef cattle, genomic selection has promising benefits for the improvement of carcass traits such as meat quality, because estimated breeding values can be obtained without sacrificing the selection candidates. The objective of this study was to assess genomic prediction accuracy for meat quality traits in Hanwoo beef cattle. Genomic and phenotypic data from 2,110 Hanwoo steers were used to predict genomic estimated breeding values for marbling score, meat texture and meat colour. The accuracy of the genomic breeding value was assessed by using cross-validation for two scenarios; 1) when the reference population of animals with phenotype and genotype included family members and 2) when family members were excluded. The mean cross-validation accuracy of genomic predictions for marbling score were 0.32 and 0.46 for the distantly and closely related validations set, respectively. These accuracies were 0.28 and 0.39 for meat texture and 0.19 to 0.31 for meat colour. The results indicated that the accuracy of prediction was affected by the heritability of the trait and the degree of relationship between reference and test population. These results were based on a small sample size and should be validated with a larger data set.