International Evaluation of Dairy Sheep in Smarter

– by A. Legarra

We work with two groups of breeds from western Pyrenees, the black-faced (Manech Tête Noire and Latxa Cara Negra from Navarre), and the blond faced (Manech Tête Rousse and Latxa Cara Rubia). These breeds follow separate breeding schemes although with frequent exchanges, in particular in the last 10 years. Therefore, there is an interest of breeders to have a common international evaluation, within either black-faced or blond-faced. The first step involved generating data sets: pedigree, records and markers. Merging pedigree and records was not too difficult. Merging markers involved considerable work because they were generated with two different chips. Then we have done preliminary joint analyses (REML and ssGBLUP) for milk yield – results show high genetic correlation across breeds, but a difficulty in estimating both Latxa and Manech genetic trends simultaneously. Future work will involve deleting old data to simplify analyses.

Work done by Carolina Garcia-Baccino, Jean Michel Astruc, Andrés Legarra, Eva Ugarte and Carolina Pineda-Quiroga

Manech tête noire breed – copyright ICAR

Manech Tête Rousse  – copyright OS ROLP