Genetic Evaluations

Dairy cattle genetic evaluation in EU countries

Twenty-two EU member countries have established the systems for dairy cattle genetic evaluations. These countries, in addition to other outside Europe countries, are collecting within-country performance records for national evaluation. The results from national evaluations are shared with Interbull Center and processed by Interbull geneticist in International (across countries) evaluation. Not only results of national evaluations that are shared with Interbull but also information/descriptions about each national evaluation system including how performance data have been collected, adjusted, analyzed, validated, published etc. However, this information still provided in different expressions, different form, incomplete and thus difficult to have an overview between countries and systems. Interbull as an EU reference center has a great interest in having this information standardized and therefore comparable. This can lead, via better comparability of information, to harmonization* in methods and definitions between countries.

According to Interbull guidelines, genetic evaluation systems are better to be defined per country per breed per trait group. In current report we collected and compared the information about national evaluation systems, sent to Interbull Centre by the countries participating in the international evaluation for production traits group (milk, fat, protein yields). The current report focuses on the twenty-two (22) countries which are currently EU members, and on dairy production’s traits.