Interbull : 2026 Interbull Meeting

Interbull
News & Events
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.

ICAR 2026 website

Accommodation Information (ICAR website)

Interbull Open Meeting Programme

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

ICAR Event Website

Conference theme and topics

Closed Meetings schedule

2026 Business Meetings

Interbull Open Meeting

Programme and Presentations - Sunday 31 May *presentations now available to download*

Download Full Programme (.pdf)

Sunday 31 May
08.30-10.30 Auditorium Session I - Experience with Single step evaluation Chair: Ezequiel Nicolazzi
0	8:30	Welcome	Interbull Steering Committee Chair, ICAR President
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
2	9:00	Hongding Gao	Variance component estimation in single-step model using MiX99
3	9:15	Simone Savoia	Modernizing U.S. Calving-Traits Evaluation Under Single-Step
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
5	9:45	Sophie Aguerre	Genetic correlations between juvenile mortality traits and traits in selection in French dairy cattle breeds
6	10:00	Hannah Kruger	Re-ranking of Imported Angus Sires Following Integration of Foreign Genotypes into a National Genomic Evaluation
7	10:15	Daniela Laurenco	Advances in single-step for national and multi-country dairy genomic evaluations
10.30-11.00 Coffee break
11.00 – 12.30 Business Meeting I (All Welcome) Auditorium
12.30 - 14.00 Lunch
14.00- 15.30 Session II - Implementing new traits in genetic and genomic evaluation systems. Chair: Daniele Vicario Auditorium
1	14:00	Attilio Rossoni	Estimation of Genetic Parameters for Lactation Persistency and Productive Maturity in the Italian Brown Swiss Breed
2	14:15	Taylor Mcwhorter	Refinement of U.S. Reproductive Performance Evaluations for the Modern Dairy Herd
3	14:30	Thuy Nguyen	2025 National Breeding Objective review for Australian dairy cattle
4	14:45	Ignacy Misztal	Genetics of increased importance of health traits
5	15:00	Q&A Session
15.30 - 16.00 Coffee Break
16.00-17.30 Session III - Efficiency of Evaluations and Adaptation/Resilience Chair: Filippo Miglior Auditorium
1	16:00	Beatriz Castro-Dias-Cuyabano	Consequences of ignoring GxE interactions when estimating genetic parameters
2	16:15	Gabriella Dodd	Interaction between adaptation and mitigation traits in Canadian Holsteins
3	16:30	Freddy Fikse	Validating the impact of genetic progress for novel and difficult to measure traits in commercial herds
4	16:45	Nicolas Gengler	Walloon strategies targeting new traits for efficiency, mitigation, adaptation and resilience in dairy cattle
5	17:00	Karoline Bakke	Genetic residual feed intake and its genetic association to other breeding goal traits
6	17:15	Q&A Session
19.30 Interbull Dinner Ristorante Maffei (Registration required)

Programme and Presentations - Monday 1 June *presentations now available to download*

Download Full Programme (.pdf)

Monday 1 June
08.30-10.30 Session IV - Big Data for the benefit of genetic and genomic evaluation Chair: Thuy Nguyen Auditorium
1	8:30	Melissa Stephen	Using sensor-derived estrus dates to improve the genetic evaluation of fertility in the New Zealand dairy industry
2	8:45	Katarzyna Stachowicz	Assessing the impact of hormonal interventions on genetic evaluation of fertility in New Zealand
3	9:00	Jeremie Vandenplas	Combining environmental and genomic information in artificial neural networks for phenotypic prediction
4	9:15	Ferdinando Galluzzo	An integrated SaaS ecosystem for standardized phenotypic evaluation and predictive modeling in livestock breeding
5	9:30	John Cole	A Machine Learning Framework for Concurrent Identification of Favorable, Deleterious, and Lethal Variants in Bovine Populations
6	9:45	Renzo Bonifazi	Guidelines on combining genomic data across populations
7	10:00	Johannes Heise	European Bovine Evaluation – building joint genetic evaluations across Europe
8	10:15	Julius Mugambe	Including Females in MACE evaluation
10.30-11.00 Coffee Break
11.00-12.30 Business Meeting II (All Welcome) Auditorium
12.30-14.00 Lunch
14.00-15.45 Session V - Meta-analytical methods Chair: Sebastian Mucha Auditorium
1	14:00	Maciej Misztal	Visualization of changes in relationships among traits over time – example in type traits
2	14:15	Dawid Slomian	Estimation of genetic parameters for production traits in Polish Simmental cattle using a random regression test-day model
3	14:30	Audrey Martin	Pilot genomic evaluations of French crossbred dairy cattle
4	14:45	Nick Wu	Reassessing Wiggans’ Method for Estimating Daily Yields in 3× Milking Systems over Four Decades: What Have We Learned?
5	15:00	Andres Legarra	Estimation of across-breed metafounder parameters in all-breed US dairy cattle.
6	15:15	Rodrigo Mota	Effects of weighting schemes and base adjustment on US genomic validation
7	15:30	Pete Sullivan	Using Interbull validations to improve national genomic predictions
	15:45	Urs Schnyder	Close
15:45 Coffee Break

Joint ICAR-Interbull Session - Wednesday 3 June

Joint ICAR-Interbull session ICAR conference scheduled for Wednesday 3 June 14.00-16.00, Auditorium Genomic selection and methane phenotyping: risks, opportunities and standards
14:00-14:15	John B. Cole	Limits to selection in U.S. dairy cattle after several generations of genomic evaluation
14:15-14:30	Bjørg Heringstad	Genetic associations between methane emission and other economically important traits
14:30-14:45	Colin Lynch	BWYPEX: Discovery, Approval and Management of Genetic Abnormalities in Cattle
14:45-15:00	Enrico Carlo Santus	Digital Innovation at the Service of Breeders: The Synergy Portal and Mobile App for Real-Time Genetic Decision Support
15:00-15:15	Hélène Soyeurt	Novel approach to develop robust artificial neural network for FT-MIR prediction of enteric methane emissions in dairy cows
15:15-15:30	Anouk van Breukelen	Using milk mid-infrared spectra from dairy cows to predict methane measured by sniffers and GreenFeed
15:30-15:45	Astrid Köck	Prediction of methane emissions based on milk fatty acid profiles shows similar performance to milk MIR spectra
15:45-16:00	Sarah Joe Burn	Comparing Methodologies for Deriving Methane Phenotypes from Laser Methane Detector Data in Small Ruminants

Friday 29 May	08.30 -16.00	Interbull Technical Committee
Friday 29 May	19.30	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	Dinner: Ristorante Olivo
Tuesday 2 June	08.30 - 09.30	Interbull Technical Committee
Tuesday 2 June	09.30 - 10.30	Interbull Steering Committee
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.

Interbull Meeting 2026

A collaboration between

**The Scientific programme for the Open meeting is now available under the "programme and Presentation" section further down on this page**

Useful dates:

Joint ICAR-Interbull session

ICAR conference scheduled for Wednesday 3 June

14.00-16.00, Auditorium

Genomic selection and methane phenotyping: risks, opportunities and standards

The Scientific programme for the Open meeting is now available under the "programme and Presentation" section further down on this page