Application of genomic selection in commercial egg-type populations

Genomic selection is a relatively new genetics tool that is being utilized by commercial poultry breeding companies to increase the rate of progress for performance traits. It utilizes information from multiple genetic variants (genotypes) located across the entire genome, in combination with trait information (phenotypes) for those individuals with genomic data. These two types of information are combined and used to predict the most accurate breeding value for individuals. The breeding value is the sum of the additive effects on phenotype of alleles at all single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) and is twice the expected deviation from population mean in performance of the progeny when the individual is mated to other individuals from the same population. Thus, the genotype information can be used to predict which individual has the best genetics to pass to subsequent generations to improve progeny performance.