Accuracy of Genomic Breeding Values Predicted Within and Across Breeds in Pig Populations

Data were available from animals of two commercial dam populations: 1070 Dutch Landrace-based and 1389 Large White-based. Four traits were analyzed: age at first insemination (AFI), total number of piglets born (TNB), litter birth weight (LBW), and litter variation (LVR). Deregressed estimated breeding values (DEBV) were used as the response variable. The accuracy of genomic estimated breeding values (GEBV) was the correlation between GEBV and DEBV. Scenarios were divided into two groups: within- and across-breed prediction. Accuracies for within-breed prediction for the four traits ranged from 0.14 to 0.70, indicating a modest to good predictive ability. Accuracies for across-breed prediction for AFI and TNB were not significantly different from zero, whereas accuracies for LBW and LVR ranged from 0.16 to 0.26. These results suggest that the accuracies are trait-dependent, but in general across-breed prediction was not effective in this data set.