Beef cattle

Estimation of Genetic Parameters and Validation of a Single-Step Genomic Evaluation for Meat Eating Quality Traits in Irish Beef Cattle.

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Abstract

In 2020, the Irish Cattle Breeding Federation (ICBF), in collaboration with Teagasc and Meat Technology Ireland (MTI), launched a multi-breed single-step genomic evaluation for meat eating quality (MEQ). This evaluation incorporates phenotypes for tenderness, juiciness, and flavour collected by trained sensory panellists, and genomic information from these informative animals is propagated through the single-step model to produce breeding values for over 6 million genotyped animals. The evaluation is published routinely six times per year. Since 2012, intramuscular fat (marbling) phenotypes, a trait closely associated with MEQ, have been collected via live ultrasonic scanning at ICBF's progeny test centre. The objective of this study was therefore to (i) estimate genetic parameters for the existing MEQ traits along with marbling, and (ii) validate the single-step genomic evaluation against a pedigree-based approach. The dataset included 8,270 sensory panel records for tenderness, juiciness, and flavour, and 6,605 live ultrasound scanning records, with over 95% of phenotyped animals genotyped. The performance of the single-step genomic evaluation was assessed by masking the phenotypic records of progeny from 165 sires, each represented by at least 20 progeny, and comparing prediction accuracy with that from a pedigree-based evaluation. Estimated heritabilities were 0.161 for tenderness, 0.091 for juiciness, 0.124 for flavour, and 0.178 for marbling, with all genetic correlations among traits positive. Validation results demonstrated improved prediction accuracy and reduced bias for all four traits when using the single-step genomic evaluation compared with the traditional pedigree-based approach.

Keywords: 2026

How to Cite:

Thompson, M., Naderi, S., Conroy, S. & Berry, D., (2026) “Estimation of Genetic Parameters and Validation of a Single-Step Genomic Evaluation for Meat Eating Quality Traits in Irish Beef Cattle.”, World Congress on Genetics Applied to Livestock Production Digital Archive 2026(1): 2286406. doi: https://doi.org/10.31274/wcgalp.23988

Rights: 1