the objective of this study was to compare the accuracy of estimating and predicting breeding values using two diverse approaches, gblup and bayesc, using simulated data under different quantitative trait locus(qtl) effect distributions. data were simulated with three different distributions for the qtl effect which were uniform, normal and gamma (1.66, 0.4). the number of qtl was assumed to be...

Small area estimation has received a lot of attention in recent years due to growing demand for reliable small area statistics. Traditional area-specific estimators may not provide adequate precision because sample sizes in small areas are seldom large enough. This makes it necessary to employ indirect estimators based on linking models. Basic area level and unit level models have been extensiv...

In animal populations, family members inherit alleles through common ancestors and these shared regions are referred to as identical by descent (IBD). Furthermore, animals may also share alleles due to a random association with no known common inheritance pattern. This identity by state (IBS) also covers known relationships, such that regions that are IBD are also IBS, however regions that are ...

Manganese efficiency is a quantitative abiotic stress trait controlled by several genes each with a small effect. Manganese deficiency leads to yield reduction in winter barley ( L.). Breeding new cultivars for this trait remains difficult because of the lack of visual symptoms and the polygenic features of the trait. Hence, Mn efficiency is a potential suitable trait for a genomic selection (G...

Models for genome-wide prediction and association studies usually target a single phenotypic trait. However, in animal and plant genetics it is common to record information on multiple phenotypes for each individual that will be genotyped. Modeling traits individually disregards the fact that they are most likely associated due to pleiotropy and shared biological basis, thus providing only a pa...

Genomic selection can increase genetic gain per generation through early selection. Genomic selection is expected to be particularly valuable for traits that are costly to phenotype, and expressed late in the life-cycle of long-lived species. Alternative approaches to genomic selection prediction models may perform differently for traits with distinct genetic properties. Here the performance of...

High-throughput phenotyping (HTP) platforms can be used to measure traits that are genetically correlated with wheat ( L.) grain yield across time. Incorporating such secondary traits in the multivariate pedigree and genomic prediction models would be desirable to improve indirect selection for grain yield. In this study, we evaluated three statistical models, simple repeatability (SR), multitr...

The traditional quantitative genetics model was used as the unifying approach to derive six existing and new definitions of genomic additive and dominance relationships. The theoretical differences of these definitions were in the assumptions of equal SNP effects (equivalent to across-SNP standardization), equal SNP variances (equivalent to within-SNP standardization), and expected or sample SN...