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International evaluations of dairy cattle are performed for six international breeds and seven economically important trait groups. The breeds currently included are:
Holstein, Brown Swiss, Jersey, Simmental, Guernsey and Red Dairy Cattle (including Ayrshire).
Both genetic (aka conventional) and genomic international evaluations are offered. You can read more about our evaluations below.
"Interbull services enhance livestock genetic improvement through international data exchange and best methods development"
Toine Roozen
Interbull Centre Director
Multiple Across Country Evaluations (MACE)
Around the world, there are many countries with their own breed populations and national evaluation systems for calculating bull proofs and cow indexes for various important traits. Each country has its own animal identification and herdbook registration system for recording animal details and parentage information; its own type of classification system; and its own milk recording system that may, or may not, also collect data related to calving ease, fertility, longevity, milking speed, milking temperament, etc. The genetic evaluation centre within each country has developed and implemented its own methods and genetic evaluations are often expressed on different scales, making bull proofs not comparable across countries. MACE is a method for international genetic evaluations used by Interbull which combines information from participating countries using all known relationships between animals, both within and across populations, to calculate across-country measures of genetic merit for individual traits.
Genomic Multiple Across Country Evaluations
(GMACE)
With the arrival of genomic evaluations in various countries, there has been a growing interest and demand for the international marketing of semen from young genomic bulls. This creates the same problem that originated before the development of MACE: The fact that proofs for progeny proven sires are not comparable across countries extends to genomic young sires too.
GMACE is a method for international genomic evaluations of young bulls, less than seven years of age.
GMACE evaluations combine usage of the national genomic evaluation estimated in each of the countries where a genotype exists with MACE parent average in each of the countries where a genotype does not exist and produce a genomic evaluation on the scales of the countries that do not yet have a genotype.
National Genetic Evaluation Centres submit GEBVs for their young candidate bulls, and together with the MACE-proofs of their sires calculated in the equivalent MACE-run, the international GEBV of the young bulls are calculated on each country scale. During a particular evaluation run a bull can only appear in GMACE or MACE, not in both. In effect this means that as soon as a young bull has the required number of daughters in any countries to receive a MACE proofs, or he becomes older than seven years, he will no longer be part of GMACE.
InterGenomics
Some countries, especially those with small populations, may be unable to implement a national genomic evaluation, especially if they are not part of a large international genotype-exchange consortia. The basic principle of the InterGenomics service is to pool genotypes provided by participating countries to create a unique reference population for international genomic evaluation without the need of sharing genotypes among participants.
InterGenomics is an international genotype-based genomic evaluation service provided by Interbull. InterGenomics predicts GEBVs on each specific country-trait combination scale, for the traits evaluated in the Interbull MACE Service. The distributed results from InterGenomics evaluations are SNP-effects, DGVs, GEBVs, and their reliabilities. In addition, information on duplicate genotypes, SNP-conflicts and parentage conflicts are also provided.
The target participants for InterGenomics are breeds and populations that are too small to have an effective national genomic evaluation, and that will benefit from a service with a pooled reference population.
Validation
Validation tests provide reassurance to the evaluation centres, cattle organisations, and farmers that the bias in their statistical models applied for a given breed or trait are within a tolerated threshold of 2%. This is an assurance that their statistical models applied are sound and appropriate to their data, avoiding any under- or over estimation of their animals’ genetic value.
Interbull Centre offers five different validation methods for this scope:
- Four methods for validating of conventional (genetic) national models (including trend tests and Mendelians Sampling Variance tests)
- One method for validating of genomic national models (GEBV test)
A special validation method is represented by TMACE helping countries with a national genomic evaluation improving information on their reference population by obtaining MACE results on their foreign animals.
The Interbull Centre facilitates the exchange of data through four services on three platforms, where two of these services are available also to those who do not take part in our international genetic evaluations.
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GenoEx is a platform for sharing of genotypes with a number of organization, reducing the need of re-genotyping the same animals and eliminating the need for bilateral sharing among sets of organisations. Two separate services are offered on the GenoEx-platform, Parental SNP Exhange (PSE) and Genotype Data Exchange (GDE).
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GenoEX-PSE allows countries to share parentage SNPs in order to check and improve pedigrees. GenoEX-PSE allows for a more identification of daughters in semen importing countries and is available for any breed (dairy & beef). This services is open also for organisations that does not take part in our genetic evaluations.
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GenoEX-GDE is our service for exchanging full sets of genotypes for genomic evaluations. It provides an easy way for exchanging of large genotype datasets, facilitating building reference populations, decreasing costs by avoiding re-genotyping the same individuals and encouraging development of genomic evaluations.
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Genetic Traits: Exchange of information on mono-genetic traits is great for farmers to avoid mating two carrier animals, or selecting animals with a desired trait. It is a service for sharing animal-specific information on genetic traits, currently available in the Holstein and Brown Swiss breeds. Besides allowing access to a wider set of information and assuring a smoother and more timely exchange of genetic information (including recessive traits) among participating countries, the service also effectively facilitates reducing the amount of conflicting information among participating countries.
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PREPdb is a platform providing information about the genetic and genomic evaluations performed in organisations around the world. Any organisation can upload information after requesting and receiving a log-in. The information provided is open to the public, and specific information can be queried. This makes the platform a useful tool for exchanging knowledge, both to universities, students and among genetic evaluation centres.
