Abstract

Predicting heterosis for crossbred offspring of individual sires would harness variation between sires from the same pure-line, and can increase the utilization of heterosis in crossbreeding schemes. We aimed to derive the theoretical expectation for heterosis in crossbred offspring of individual sires, and then predict heterosis for these offspring. We used 60K SNP-genotypes from 3427 sires, allele frequencies from 9 pure-lines, and egg number records from 16 crosses between those lines, representing ~210,000 crossbred hens. Results show that it is possible to predict heterosis at the sire level, thereby distinguishing between sires within the same pure-line whose offspring will show higher heterosis. However, variation in predicted heterosis between sires within a line was low in our data; most differences were seen between lines. A potential improvement of the method would be to base predictions on a subset of SNPs with identified effects on heterosis.

Published in

Title: Proceedings of the 10th World Congress of Genetics Applied to Livestock Production
Publisher: WCGALP

SLU Authors

• Amuzu, Esinam

  • Department of Animal Biosciences, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    
  • Wageningen University

• de Koning, Dirk-Jan

  • Department of Animal Biosciences, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

UKÄ Subject classification

Genetics and Breeding


Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/63368