Deregressing estimated breeding values and weighting information for genomic regression analyses

Abstract

Genomic prediction of breeding values involves a so-called training analysis that predicts the influence of small genomic regions by regression of observed information on marker genotypes for a given population of individuals. Available observations may take the form of individual phenotypes, repeated observations, records on close family members such as progeny, estimated breeding values (EBV) or their deregressed counterparts from genetic evaluations. The literature indicates that researchers are inconsistent in their approach to using EBV or deregressed data, and as to using the appropriate methods for weighting some data sources to account for heterogeneous variance.