2017 Interbull Technical Workshop

The 2017 Interbull Technical Workshop, aimed at technical staff at Interbull Service Users and researchers in the Interbull community, will be held in the City Hotel in Ljubljana, Slovenia, on 6 and 7 February 2017 (http://www.cityhotel.si/)

The workshop will be limited to a maximum of 70 participants.

In order to ensure your place, and book a hotel room – at a special rate from €77 – please register asap, but no later than 5 January 2017.

Registration is now closed!

Contact Interbull Centre if you realized you would like to join the meeting

Getting there:

Ljubljana (half hour journey from venue):

The local organizers will arrange free transportation to/from the Ljubliana airport if booked in advanced.

Venice Airport (approximately 3-hour journey from venue):

Transportation to/from Venice airport will be available - subject to a fee.

Please send arrival/departure dates and flight numbers information to Marija.Klopcic@bf.uni-lj.si

Workshop Schedule:

(This Workshop Schedule and Programme may be subject to change.)

Description of Workshop Themes

Theme 1: Adapt MACE to genomic selection

1a) Single-step evaluations

Chair: Gerben DeJong

Single step methodology is gaining ground in the world of genomic selection. In dairy cattle, some countries started to use single step as the official method for their national evaluation. Unlike the traditional models, this method combines information from pedigree, phenotypes and genotypes, which results in breeding values including genomic information. This raises the question about how the MACE model could handle this genomic information and also how countries should deal with MACE when they are using single step methodology. The aim of this session is to discuss these issues through an interesting exchange between international and national experiences in order to identify possible solutions and future directions.

Program:

General Introduction (H. Jorjani, Interbull Centre)

Status of single-step and utility for Interbull / MACE (Key Note Speaker: Professor Ignacy Misztal, University of Georgia, USA)

Experiences from national evaluations:

• Tests with single-step genomic evaluation for production traits for US Holsteins (Masuda Yutaka, USA)
• Can MACE and national ssGBLUP integrating MACE cohabitate without double-counting? (Vandenplas Jeremie, Belgium)
• Implanting MACE values in national single step genomic evaluation (Jiri Splichal, Czech Republic)
• Choices in genomic evaluation for small populations (Andonov Sreten Macedonia)

Coffee break

Group work (Discussion in 7 small groups)

Presentation of group discussion results 

General discussion

1b) Keep validation tests up to date

Chair: Gert Pedersen Aamand

In the current era of genomic selection, how will conventional validation methods detect the bias introduced with genomic selection? Are national genetic evaluation centers still able to calculate necessary information required by the tests, for example second crop daughters for method III? This session will explore possible future adjustments to conventional validation methods.

Program:

General Introduction (H. Jorjani, Interbull Centre)

Variability of prediction errors in cross-validation: a statistical (machine) learning perspective (Key Note Speaker: Daniel Gianola, USA)

Validation issues

• Consequences of using genomic information as pseudo-observations in the Dutch-Flemish National Evaluation (Gerben de Jong, Netherlands)
• Validation of genomic and genetic evaluations (Esa Mäntysaary, Finland)
• Genomics: The New Zealand experience and thoughts on future validation of models (Bevin Harris, New Zealand)

Group work (Discussion in 7 small groups)

Coffee break

Presentation of group discussion results

• How to model genomic selection and data recycling among national and international evaluation systems (Pete Sullivan, Canada)

Theme 2: International SNP model

Chair: Zengting Liu

Underlying each country's genomic evaluation are estimates of the SNP effects. If we could combine these SNP effects, as we traditionally do EBVs, we could all have more accurate SNP effects and therefore more accurate genomic EBVs. Eventually we would have a list of sequence variants including many causal variants. This session will discuss a possible Interbull pilot project of an International meta-analysis of SNP effects to test this idea.

 Program:

Combining SNP solutions across countries (Key Note Speaker: Professor Michael Goddard, University of Melbourne, Australia)

Contributions

• Some opportunities and challenges regarding SNP international evaluations (Vincent Ducroque, France)
• International SNP effect estimation: technical challenges and possible solutions (Zengting Liu, Germany)

Theme 3: International R&D Network

Moderators: Reinhard Reents (Interbull Chairman) and Toine Roozen (Interbull Centre Director)

Developments in animal breeding are fast, and ideas and plans to implement these are plentiful. However, the resources (including the number of geneticists world wide) required to implement these in a timely fashion are limited. In this session we will explore the possibilities to make optimal use of the knowledge and expertise throughout the Interbull Community, while fairly sharing costs and benefits of R&D, in order to speed up the implementation of new and enhanced services for Interbull Service Users.

•  Reflection on R&D strategy for Interbull Centre (Reinhard Reents, Germany)

• Opportunities for an international R&D Network (Antonius Roozen, Sweden)

Satellite meetings:

Steering Committee meeting

ITC meeting

InterGenomics-BSW meeting

InterGenomics-HOL meeting

Evening Programmes:

Monday 6 February 2017: Guided tour of Ljubljana followed by dinner in Restaurant “SOKOL” http://www.gostilna-sokol.com/en/

Tuesday 7 February 2017: Dinner in Restaurant  “Na Gradu” at Ljubljana Castle http://www.nagradu.si/en/