Reliability of direct genomic values for animals with different relationships within and to the reference population

Accuracy of genomic selection depends on the accuracy of prediction of single nucleotide polymorphism effects and the proportion of genetic variance explained by markers. Design of the reference population with respect to its family structure may influence the accuracy of genomic selection. The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of various relationship levels within the reference population and different level of relationship of evaluated animals to the reference population on the reliability of direct genomic breeding values (DGV). The DGV reliabilities, expressed as squared correlation between estimated and true breeding value, were calculated for evaluated animals at 3 heritability levels. To emulate a trait that is difficult or expensive to measure, such as methane emission, reference populations were kept small and consisted of females with own performance records. A population reflecting a dairy cattle population structure was simulated. Four chosen reference populations consisted of all females available in the first genotyped generation. They consisted of highly (HR), moderately (MR), or lowly (LR) related animals, by selecting paternal half-sib families of decreasing size, or consisted of randomly chosen animals (RND). Of those 4 reference populations, RND had the lowest average relationship. Three sets of evaluated animals were chosen from 3 consecutive generations of genotyped animals, starting from the same generation as the reference population. Reliabilities of DGV predictions were calculated deterministically using selection index theory. The randomly chosen reference population had the lowest average relationship within the reference population. Average reliabilities increased when average relationship within the reference population decreased and the highest average reliabilities were achieved for RND (e.g., from 0.53 in HR to 0.61 in RND for a heritability of 0.30). A higher relationship to the reference population resulted in higher reliability values. At the average squared relationship of evaluated animals to the reference population of 0.005, reliabilities were, on average, 0.49 (HR) and 0.63 (RND) for a heritability of 0.30; 0.20 (HR) and 0.27 (RND) for a heritability of 0.05; and 0.07 (HR) and 0.09 (RND) for a heritability of 0.01. Substantial decrease in the reliability was observed when the number of generations to the reference population increased e.g., for heritability of 0.30, the decrease from evaluated set I (chosen from the same generation as the reference population) to II (one generation younger than the reference population) was 0.04 for HR, and 0.07 for RND. In this study, the importance of the design of a reference population consisting of cows was shown and optimal designs of the reference population for genomic prediction were suggested.