Use of genomic information to estimate breeding values for carcass traits in sheep

Breeding values for carcass traits were estimated in a multi-breed sheep population using phenotypic, pedigree, and genomic information. This was achieved by incorporating a genomic relationship matrix into the standard pedigree based relationship matrix used in an animal model genetic evaluation. Heritability estimates were generally very close to estimates from a model using pedigree information only. A group of young rams genotyped but not measured for the traits in question were included in the analysis, and the accuracy of their estimated breeding values estimated using the prediction error variances of the fitted model increased by between 14 and 24 percentage points when genomic information was used. However, these accuracies were between 12 and 24 percentage points higher than observed accuracies, indicating that the scaling of the genomic relationship matrix was incorrect. Further research is required on the implementation of the method in multi-breed data.