International trends in genetic evaluation of functional traits in dairy cattle

unctional traits have become increasingly important in the dairy cattle industry due to ncreased costs of production relative to milk prices. This has instigated recording of unctional traits to be used for both management and breeding purposes. Although economic alues differ between countries, the emphasis for functional relative to production traits have ncreased throughout the western world during past decades. The Scandinavian countries ave traditionally recorded and performed genetic evaluation for a broad range of functional raits, but in recent years, many other countries have also implemented genetic evaluation for dder health, fertility, longevity and calving traits. International genetic evaluations are vailable or being investigated for these traits due to the increased trait availability and emand for such services. Across country genetic correlations are high for most trait groups, ut further trait harmonisations could lead to better international evaluations. Modern and ore cost effective recording devices give new opportunities of directly or indirectly easuring functional traits, especially in nucleus herd selection schemes, although it is a hallenge to maintain emphasis on low heritability traits in such systems. Increasingly ophisticated genetic test-day models also provide useful information for management urposes. Locomotion, feed efficiency and metabolic stress measures are important traits hat are currently not widely considered for genetic evaluation, but may be so in future.