Enabling genetic evaluations

Genomic selection has become a valuable tool in animal breeding because it can increase the genetic gain while reducing the generation interval. Early methods to incorporate the DNA information in multiple steps were complicated and often inaccurate. A different method developed at UGA called single-step GBLUP considers all the available information: DNA, pedigrees and phenotypes jointly. The method is accurate and simple to use. UGA animal and dairy scientists derived a new algorithm called APY for inversion of the genomic relationship matrix. The single-step method using the APY algorithm allows the industry to incorporate the DNA information efficiently and reliably, without any limit on the number of animals with DNA. With this development, genomic selection is becoming a routine methodology, putting UGA in forefront of research in genetic evaluation worldwide.