Abstract #15

# 15
The effect of genomic technologies in the selection of novel phenotypes in dairy crossbreeding programs.
Richard J. Spelman*1, Mathew D. Littlejohn1, Ric G. Sherlock1, Steve Davis1, 1Livestock Improvement Corporation, Hamilton, New Zealand.

Genomic selection in dairy cattle has been successfully applied for milk production traits in many countries around the world. This has been enabled through the routine collection of phenotypes over several years and the large body of animals that have been genotyped. The application of genomics for non-routinely collected phenotypes has been less successful due to the cost of phenotyping and the smaller number of animals available for genotyping. Genomic estimates for Johne’s susceptibility and residual feed intake have been recently commercialized in the New Zealand dairy population. Johne’s susceptibility has been estimated in a case control experimental setting. Over 1,500 animals that have been identified to be affected by Johne’s have been genotyped and compared with a control derived from the general population of animals that have been genotyped in the LIC genomic selection data set. The accuracy of evaluation for Johne’s susceptibility is approximately 30% with a heritability of 18%. Residual feed intake was measured over 2000 growing Holstein-Friesian heifers in New Zealand and Australia, which were phenotyped over 42 d for feed intake and live weight gain. Genomic estimates for residual feed intake have a reliability of 10%.

Key Words: dairy, genomics, crossbreeding

Speaker Bio
I have worked for LIC for over 20 years and am currently the Chief Scientist.  I have lead the research and application of genomic selection in the NZ dairy population.