[en] The aim of this study was to test the integration of foreign estimated breeding values (EBV) for stallions into the Belgian genetic evaluation for jumping horses. Belgian breeders import horses from neighbouring countries for which foreign information is needed as prior to estimate a more accurate EBV. The Belgian model is a bivariate repeatability BLUP animal model. For the year 2009, pedigree and data files contained 101 382 horses and 712 212 performances. 98 French and 67 Dutch stallions were selected and their foreign EBVs were converted into Belgian national trait. Associated reliabilities were also estimated. A Bayesian approach (Legarra et al., 2007) was applied to integrate this prior information into the Belgian evaluation. It led to a slight modification of the average EBV and of the standard deviation for the whole population. It also led to a new Belgian ranking of the foreign stallions more similar to foreign rankings. However, the adequacy of the Belgian model was not damaged. With regards to prediction ability, Bayesian evaluations using conversion equation estimated by Weighted Least Squares procedure predicted the best traditional EBVs of the year 2009 for the French stallions. For the Dutch ones, it were the evaluations associated to the conversion equation based on Wilmink et al. (1986). For both countries, Bayesian evaluations using conversion equation based on Goddard (1985) improved the most the stability of EBVs. Finally, integration of French and Dutch information improved reliabilities of the Bayesian EBVs of at least 5% and 2% for French and Dutch stallions, respectively. These results confirm the interest to integrate foreign information into the Belgian evaluation for jumping horses.
Disciplines :
Animal production & animal husbandry Genetics & genetic processes