Abstract

HERNANDEZ, Arelis; PONCE DE LEON, Raquel  and  GARCIA, Sonia Maria. Genetic evaluation of multibreed populations of milking bovines. Cuban J. Agric. Sci. [online]. 2015, vol.49, n.4, pp. 459-463. ISSN 2079-3480.

In order to fulfill this study, a total of 130,111 records of accumulated milk production, up to 305 days (L305), from three Cuban genetic enterprises and between 1984 and 2013, were used. Out of a total of 61,471 cows, 12,496 belonged to Mambí de Cuba breed (3/4 Holstein ¼ Zebu), 17,178 Siboney de Cuba breed (5/8 Holstein 3/8 Zebu) and 31,797 Holstein. The purpose of the study was to compare the multibreed genetic evaluation for milk production with genetic evaluations of each breed. To estimate the genetic indicators and breeding values of L305, a univariate animal model was used, which included, as fixed effects, the combination herd-year-four-month period of parturition. The age at parturition was used as linear and square covariable, random effects of the animal, the effect of the environment and residues. Breed was also included as fixed effect in the multibreeding genetic evaluation. Heritabilities and repetitions were  0.31 ± 0.01 y 0.40 ± 0.01 for the multibreeding genetic evaluation, and 0.18 ± 0.05 and  0.41±0.02, 0.14± 0.05 and 0.41 ± 0.02, 0.12 ± 0.01 and 0.25 ± 0.01 for the independent racial evaluations of  Mambí de Cuba, Siboney de Cuba and Holstein, respectively. In the multibreeding genetic evaluation, the estimation of heritability and the accuracy of breeding values for milk production of the three studied breeds increased regarding the evaluations of each individual breed, mainly because of a higher amount of information and higher connectivity among breeds, which contribute to decrease the environmental variance. It can be concluded that the inclusion of multibreeding genetic evaluations on the program of genetic improvement of Cuban milking bovines allows to obtain a better accuracy of breeding values, which will also contribute to the increase of the genetic progress for milk production

Keywords : genetic evaluation; multibreed; crossing.

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