The impact of genomic relatedness between populations on the genomic estimated breeding values

In genomic selection, prediction accuracy is highly driven by the size of animals in the reference population (RP). Combining related populations from different countries and regions or using a related population with large size of RP has been considered to be viable strategies in cattle breeding. The genetic relationship between related populations is important for improving the genomic predictive ability. In this study, we used 122 French bulls as test individuals. The genomic estimated breeding values (GEBVs) evaluated using French RP, America RP and Chinese RP were compared. The results showed that the GEBVs were in higher concordance using French RP and American RP compared with using Chinese population. The persistence analysis, kinship analysis and the principal component analysis (PCA) were performed for 270 French bulls, 270 American bulls and 270 Chinese bulls to interpret the results. All the analyses illustrated that the genetic relationship between French bulls and American bulls was closer compared with Chinese bulls. Another reason could be the size of RP in China was smaller than the other two RPs. In conclusion, using RP of a related population to predict GEBVs of the animals in a target population is feasible when these two populations have a close genetic relationship and the related population is large.