Improvement in the national genetic evaluation of warmblood riding horses by including information from related studbooks

Abstract

Young horse performance test data from two warmblood riding horse populations, Norwegian warmblood (NWB) and Swedish warmblood (SWB), were analysed to examine whether including information from a related studbook would increase the accuracy of the genetic evaluations within a population. Ten conformation and performance traits from 31,588 horses, 774 NWB and 30,814 SWB were analysed separately and jointly using single trait animal models. Heritabilities were moderate to high, and varied from 0.15 (conformation, joint data) to 0.74 (jumping technique, NWB data). The genetic similarity (GS) between populations was 31%, with the SWB, as expected given the size of the populations, contributing most to the GS (98%). Genetic correlations between the same traits in the two populations were 0.43-0.90 but with large standard errors (0.2-0.3). Including information from the other population increased the average accuracy of estimated breeding values for common stallions, on average 4% for SWB and 110% for NWB.

Keywords

sport horse; genetic similarity; genetic evaluation; Genetic parameters; performance test

Published in

Acta Agriculturae Scandinavica, Section A - Animal Science
2014, Volume: 64, number: 1, pages: 49-56 Publisher: Taylor & Francis

SLU Authors

• Gelinder Viklund, Åsa

  • Department of Animal Biosciences, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

• Philipsson, Jan

  • Department of Animal Biosciences, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

UKÄ Subject classification

Genetics and Breeding


Publication identifier

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/09064702.2013.791341

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/51506