Use of mate allocation in pig crossbreeding schemes : a simulation study
Résumé
One of the main goals in a crossbreeding scheme is to improve the performance of crossbred population by exploiting heterosis and breed complementarity. Dominance is one of the likely genetic bases of heterosis and, nowadays, estimating dominance effects in genetic evaluations has become feasible in a genomic selection context. Mate allocation strategies that account for inbreeding and/or dominance can be of interest for maximizing the crossbred performance. The objective of this study was to simulate scenarios including or not mate allocation strategies in two-breed pig crossbreeding schemes. The different crossbreeding scenarios have been compared in terms of genetic gain (within-breed) and total genetic value in crossbred populations. The benchmark scenario is a crossbreeding scheme where within-line selection is performed on purebred genomic estimated breeding values and crossbreds come from random matings of the best purebreds. The other subsequent scenarios are conceived to evaluate the potential benefits of accounting for inbreeding, dominance and crossbred performances in the genetic evaluation model. Genomic mate allocation is a promising strategy to improve the crossbred performance.