Dairy @entity291 breeding programs in developing countries are constrained by minimal and erratic pedigree and performance recording on @entity291 on commercial farms. Small-sized nucleus breeding programs offer a viable alternative. Deterministic simulations using selection index theory were performed to determine the optimum design for small-sized nucleus schemes for dairy @entity291 . The nucleus was made up of 197 bulls and 243 @entity291 distributed in 8 non-overlapping age classes. Each year 10 sires and 100 dams were selected to produce the next generation of male and female selection candidates. Conception rates and sex ratio were fixed at 0.90 and 0.50, respectively, translating to 45 male and 45 female candidates joining the nucleus per year. Commercial recorded dams provided information for genetic evaluation of selection candidates (bulls) in the nucleus. Five strategies were defined: nucleus records only [within-nucleus dam performance (DP)], progeny records in addition to nucleus records [progeny testing (PT)], genomic information only [ @entity5555 ( @entity5555 )], dam performance records in addition to genomic information ( @entity5555 +DP), and progeny records in addition to genomic information ( @entity5555 +PT). Alternative PT, @entity5555 , @entity5555 +DP, and @entity5555 +PT schemes differed in the number of progeny per sire and size of reference population. The maximum number of progeny records per sire was 30, and the maximum size of the reference population was 5,000. Results show that @entity5555 schemes had higher responses and lower accuracies compared with other strategies, with the higher response being due to shorter generation intervals. Compared with similar sized progeny-testing schemes, genomic-selection schemes would have lower accuracies but these are offset by higher responses per year, which might provide additional incentive for farmers to participate in recording.

Optimizing the design of small-sized nucleus breeding programs for dairy XXXX with minimal performance recording.

@entity5555 :: ('MESH:D042822', 'Disease') :: ['GS', 'genomic selection'] @entity291 :: ('9913', 'Species') :: ['cattle', 'cows']
@entity291 :: (9913,Species) :: ['cattle']
