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- 2026 Interbull Meeting
A collaboration between
**The Scientific programme for the Open meeting is now available under the "programme and Presentation" section further down on this page**
The 2026 Interbull Annual Meeting will be held in conjunction with ICAR in Verona, Italy in the Camera di Commercio Industria Artigianato Agricoltura (The Verona Chamber of Commerce Congress Center)
Interbull Business Meetings, Open Meetings will be organised on Sunday 31 May and Monday 1 June 2026. The Joint ICAR-Interbull session will be held on Wednesday 3 June. The Interbull Dinner will take place on Sunday 31 May.
Participation to the meeting and dinner requires a separate paid registration fee. Information on how to register, costs and hotel booking are all available through the ICAR event website.
Useful dates:
Full presentation submission: 28 May 2026
Paper submission to Interbull Bulletin: 31 August 2026
For location information, hotel and registration details, see the ICAR event website
The overall theme for the Interbull Open Meetings is: " Innovations in national and international genetic and genomic evaluations " addressing both dairy and beef.
Sessions usually include the following topics:
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Big data for the benefit of genetic and genomic evaluation
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Meta-analytical methods in animal genetic and genomic evaluation.
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Experience with single-step evaluation.
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Implementing new traits in genetic and genomic evaluation systems.
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Cross-breed genetic and genomic evaluations
- Sustainability, efficiency, methane emission and adaptation/resilience.
The meetings below are closed meetings by invitation only.
| Friday 29 May | 08.30 -16.00 | Interbull Technical Committee |
| Friday 29 May | 19.30 (tbc) | Dinner: Enoteca Dal Zovo |
| Saturday 30 May | 08.30 - 12.30 | Interbull Steering Committee |
| Saturday 30 May | 14.00 - 15.00 | ICAR Board and Interbull Steering Committee |
| Saturday 30 May | 15.00 - 17.00 | Interbull Steering Committee |
| Saturday 30 May | 19.30 (tbc) | Dinner: Ristorante Olivo |
| Tuesday 2 June | 08.30 - 12.30 (tbc) | Interbull Technical Committee (tbc) |
| Tuesday 2 June | 11.00 - 13.00 (tbc) | Interbull Steering Committee (tbc) |
| Technical and Steering Committees are administrative meetings restricted to the respective members. The Business Meeting is public and is dedicated to discuss operational and political decisions of the Steering Committee with participating organizations; Open Meetings are dedicated to scientific reports. | ||
There are two Interbull Business Meetings.
Business Meeting 1 is scheduled for Sunday 31 May 11.00-12-30
Business Meeting 2 is scheduled for Monday 1 June 11.00-12.30
The agenda will be available here nearer the time.
The Interbull Open Meeting will take place on Sunday 31 May and Monday 1 June 2026. Registration is required to attend.
There will be an Interbull Dinner on Sunday 31 May at Ristorante Maffei. This requires a separate registration to attend. All are welcome.
The programme for the Interbull Open Meeting is available on this page. The programme is separated by date, but you can download the full programme for both days in either section.
Register for the Interbull Open Meeting and Dinner on the ICAR2026 Event Pages
Download Full Programme (.pdf)
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Sunday 31 May |
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08.30-10.30 Auditorium Session I - Experience with Single step evaluation Chair: Ezequiel Nicolazzi |
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0 |
8:30 |
Welcome |
Interbull Steering Committee Chair, ICAR President |
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1 |
8:45 |
Timo Pitkanen |
Variance Component Re-Estimation and Model Simplification in a Single-Step Random Regression Test-Day Model for Nordic Red Dairy Cattle |
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2 |
9:00 |
Hongding Gao |
Variance component estimation in single-step model using MiX99 |
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3 |
9:15 |
Simone Savoia | Modernizing U.S. Calving-Traits Evaluation Under Single-Step |
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4 |
9:30 |
Ilia Rukin | Development of genomic evaluation of breeding value system for milk production traits with on-laboratory quality control of phenotypic data |
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5 |
9:45 |
Sophie Aguerre |
Genetic correlations between juvenile mortality traits and traits in selection in French dairy cattle breeds |
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6 |
10:00 |
Hannah Kruger |
Re-ranking of Imported Angus Sires Following Integration of Foreign Genotypes into a National Genomic Evaluation |
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7 |
10:15 |
Daniela Laurenco | Advances in single-step for national and multi-country dairy genomic evaluations |
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10.30-11.00
Coffee break
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11.00 – 12.30 Business Meeting I (All Welcome) Auditorium |
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12.30 - 14.00
Lunch
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14.00- 15.30 Session II - Implementing new traits in genetic and genomic evaluation systems. Chair: Daniele Vicario Auditorium |
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1 |
14:00 |
Attilio Rossoni | Estimation of Genetic Parameters for Lactation Persistency and Productive Maturity in the Italian Brown Swiss Breed |
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2 |
14:15 |
Taylor Mcwhorter | Refinement of U.S. Reproductive Performance Evaluations for the Modern Dairy Herd |
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3 |
14:30 |
Thuy Nguyen | 2025 National Breeding Objective review for Australian dairy cattle |
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4 |
14:45 |
Ignacy Misztal | Genetics of increased importance of health traits |
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5 |
15:00 |
Yueh-Tung Chen | Difference of lactation curve in 305-day milk yield between automatic and conventional milking system |
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6 |
15:15 |
Po-An, Tu | A Mobile Infrared Thermography System for Precision Phenotyping and Health Monitoring of Dairy Cows under Heat Stress Conditions |
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15.30 - 16.00 Coffee Break |
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16.00-17.30 Session III - Efficiency of Evaluations and Adaptation/Resilience Chair: Filippo Miglior Auditorium |
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1 |
16:00 |
Po-An, Tu | Localized Assessment of the Impacts of Heat Stress on Production, Health, and Animal Welfare of Dairy Cows in Subtropical Environments |
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2 |
16:15 |
Beatriz Castro-Dias-Cuyabano | Consequences of ignoring GxE interactions when estimating genetic parameters |
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3 |
16:30 |
Gabriella Dodd |
Interaction between adaptation and mitigation traits in Canadian Holsteins |
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4 |
16:45 |
Freddy Fikse |
Validating the impact of genetic progress for novel and difficult to measure traits in commercial herds |
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5 |
17:00 |
Nicolas Gengler | Walloon strategies targeting new traits for efficiency, mitigation, adaptation and resilience in dairy cattle |
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6 |
17:15 |
Karoline Bakke | Genetic residual feed intake and its genetic association to other breeding goal traits |
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19.30 Interbull Dinner Ristorante Maffei (Registration required) |
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Download Full Programme (.pdf)
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Monday 1 June |
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08.30-10.30 Session IV - Big Data for the benefit of genetic and genomic evaluation Chair: Thuy Nguyen Auditorium |
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1 |
8:30 |
Melissa Stephen |
Using sensor-derived estrus dates to improve the genetic evaluation of fertility in the New Zealand dairy industry |
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2 |
8:45 |
Katarzyna Stachowicz | Assessing the impact of hormonal interventions on genetic evaluation of fertility in New Zealand |
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3 |
9:00 |
Jeremie Vandenplas | Combining environmental and genomic information in artificial neural networks for phenotypic prediction |
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4 |
9:15 |
Ferdinando Galluzzo | An integrated SaaS ecosystem for standardized phenotypic evaluation and predictive modeling in livestock breeding |
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5 |
9:30 |
John Cole | A Machine Learning Framework for Concurrent Identification of Favorable, Deleterious, and Lethal Variants in Bovine Populations |
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6 |
9:45 |
Renzo Bonifazi |
Guidelines on combining genomic data across populations |
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7 |
10:00 |
Johannes Heise | European Bovine Evaluation – building joint genetic evaluations across Europe |
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8 |
10:15 |
Julius Mugambe |
Including Females in MACE evaluation |
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10.30-11.00 Coffee Break |
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11.00-12.30 Business Meeting II (All Welcome) Auditorium |
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12.30-14.00 Lunch |
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14.00-15.45 Session V - Meta-analytical methods Chair: Sebastian Mucha Auditorium |
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1 |
14:00 |
Maciej Misztal | Visualization of changes in relationships among traits over time – example in type traits |
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2 |
14:15 |
Dawid Slomian |
Estimation of genetic parameters for production traits in Polish Simmental cattle using a random regression test-day model |
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3 |
14:30 |
Audrey Martin | Pilot genomic evaluations of French crossbred dairy cattle |
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4 |
14:45 |
Nick Wu | Reassessing Wiggans’ Method for Estimating Daily Yields in 3× Milking Systems over Four Decades: What Have We Learned? |
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5 |
15:00 |
Andres Legarra | Estimation of across-breed metafounder parameters in all-breed US dairy cattle. |
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6 |
15:15 |
Rodrigo Mota |
Effects of weighting schemes and base adjustment on US genomic validation |
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15:30 |
Pete Sullivan | Using Interbull validations to improve national genomic predictions |
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15:45 |
Urs Schnyder |
Close |
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15:45 Coffee Break |
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There will be a joint ICAR-Interbull session as part of the ICAR conference scheduled for Wednesday 3 June from 14.00-16.00 entitled ' Genomic selection and methane phenotyping: risks, opportunities and standards '. More information including speakers and presentation titles will be available in due course.
