Genetic correlations among selected traits in Canadian Holsteins

Archive ouverte

Martin, Pauline | Baes, C. | Houlahan, K. | Richardson, C.M. | Jamrozik, J. | Miglior, F.

Edité par CCSD ; Agricultural Institute of Canada -

International audience. In the Canadian dairy industry, there are currently over 80 traits routinely evaluated, and more areconsidered for potential selection. Particularly, in the last few years, recording has commenced for several newphenotypes required to introduce novel traits with high economic importance into the selection program.However, without a systematic estimation of the genetic correlations that exist among traits, the potential resultsof indirect selection are unknown. Therefore, 29 traits representative of the trait diversity for first lactationCanadian animals were selected. Their two-by-two genetic correlations were estimated from a dataset of 62 498first lactation Holstein cows, using a Markov Chain Monte Carlo Gibbs sampling approach. The general tendenciesamong the groups of traits confirm that production traits are negatively correlated with fertility traits and thatfunctional traits are positively correlated with one another. The association of udder depth with fertility anddisease resistance has also been highlighted. This contribution offers a comprehensive overview of current esti-mates across traits and includes correlations with novel traits that constitute an original addition to the literature.These new estimates can be used for newly developed genomic evaluation models and possibly lead to more accu-rate estimations of the dairy cows’overall genetic merit.

• Description
• Sujet/Public
• Outil
• Outil d'anticipation
• Mémoire et thèse
• Gestion