Genetic and Economic Aspects of Applying Embryo Transfer in Traditional and Genomic Evaluation in Iranian Holstein Dairy Cattle

Embryo transfer (ET) in Holstein dairy cattle became an important commercial enterprise after the introduction of non-surgical recovery technique. Embryo transfer could increase the reproductive rate of genetically superior cows. The objectives of the present study were to evaluate the use of ET in Iranian Holstein dairy cattle to increase selection intensity on the dam side, economically; estimate its impact on genetic improvement with and without using genomic information and compare genetic improvement of ET with its costs. In the present study, the economic value (EV) of two strategies was calculated. In the first strategy, 10% of superior heifers, cows in parity 1 and 2 were assumed to be donor. In the second strategy heifers were not assumed as donors. The results showed that the average loss per individual in population applying ET was US$51.7 and US$46.5, for strategy 1 and 2, respectively. The average genetic superiorities of progenies produced with strategy 1 for net merit (NM$) were US$54.25, US$64.17 and US$71.27 using traditional evaluation, genomic evaluation with 3 k chip and genomic evaluation with 50 k chip and with strategy 2 were US$68.14, US$84.04 and US$87.21, respectively. In conclusion for each strategy using each method of breeding value estimation, genetic gain resulted from ET could justify the economic loss of it.