Redefining and interpreting genomic relationships of metafounders.

Metafounders are a useful concept to characterize relationships within and across populations, and to help genetic evaluations because they help modelling the means and variances of unknown base population animals. Current definitions of metafounder relationships are sensitive to the choice of reference alleles and have not been compared to their counterparts in population genetics-namely, heterozygosities, F coefficients, and genetic distances. We redefine the relationships across populations with an arbitrary base of a maximum heterozygosity population in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium.

Estimating genomic relationships of metafounders across and within breeds using maximum likelihood, pseudo-expectation-maximization maximum likelihood and increase of relationships.

Background: The theory of "metafounders" proposes a unified framework for relationships across base populations within breeds (e.g. unknown parent groups), and base populations across breeds (crosses) together with a sensible compatibility with genomic relationships.

Metabolomic-genomic prediction can improve prediction accuracy of breeding values for malting quality traits in barley.

Background: Metabolomics measures an intermediate stage between genotype and phenotype, and may therefore be useful for breeding. Our objectives were to investigate genetic parameters and accuracies of predicted breeding values for malting quality (MQ) traits when integrating both genomic and metabolomic information. In total, 2430 plots of 562 malting spring barley lines from three years and two locations were included.

Selection for social genetic effects in purebred pigs improves behaviour and handling of their crossbred progeny.

Background: In commercial pig production, reduction of harmful social behavioural traits, such as ear manipulation and tail biting, is of major interest. Moreover, farmers prefer animals that are easy to handle. The aim of this experiment was to determine whether selection on social breeding values (SBV) for growth rate in purebred pigs affects behaviour in a weighing crate, lesions from ear manipulation, and tail biting of their crossbred progeny.