In recent years there has been much focus on the use of single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) fine genome mapping to identify causative mutations for traits of interest; however, many studies focus only on the marginal effects of markers, ignoring potential gene interactions. Simulation studies have show that this approach may not be powerful enough to detect important loci when gene interactions are present. While several studies have examined potential gene interaction, they tend to focus on a small number of […]

A simulation study was carried out to apply and compare an alternative mating strategy for increasing the probability of producing outstanding animals and reducing progeny variability, with other conventional strategies. Fifty populations were simulated, each containing 4,800 dams, 160 sires and 4,800 calves. For each dam and sire, a random variable from a normal distribution was generated, mimicking an index composed by several expected progeny differences (EPD). The mating strategies considered were: (1) random mating (RM); (2) positive assortative mating […]

This work was carried out to apply a simulation model for the bioeconomic evaluation of feeding strategies for dairy herds and evaluate the physical productivity and the bioeconomic efficiency of feeding systems for dairy cows using feeding forage based strategies for cows with five levels of milk yield. An computational platform developed with the programs CNCPS v5.0 and electronic spreadsheets of Microsoft Excell® was used, in way to simulate the production and demands of nutrients of a complete lactation for […]

This work was carried out to evaluate the bioeconomic efficiency of cows of different levels of milk yield per lactation, under different feeding strategies. The bioeconomic evaluations was carried out in cows of five milk yield levels and seven feeding strategies The simulation model was developed with the programs CNCPS v5.0 and electronic spreadsheets of Microsoft Excell®, in way to simulate the production and demands of nutrients of a complete lactation for cows of different milk yield levels. The bioeconomic […]

This work was carried out to development a alternative methodology for the bioeconomic evaluation of feeding strategies for dairy herds and evaluate the physical productivity and the bioeconomic efficiency of feeding systems for dairy cows when different feeding strategies forages based are used for cows of five levels of milk yield. The computational platform was developed with the programs CNCPS v5.0 and electronic spreadsheets of Microsoft Excell®, in way to simulate the production and demands of nutrients of a complete […]

A genome of 3.000 centimorgans was simulated for a single quantitative trait governed by 800 loci with two alleles per locus. According to the genomic structure proposed, 1,500 males and 1,500 females constituted the base population which was used to form two (small and large) initial populations. Two types (only additive genetic variance and both additive genetic and environmental variances) and three variability levels (high, medium and low) of heterogeneity of variances were inserted in the initial populations. Variance components […]

This study aimed to evaluate the inbreeding coefficient, alleles fixation and selection limit in a population selected during 20 generations. Selection was based on breeding values predicted by classical best linear unbiased prediction (BLUP), BLUP associated with molecular markers (BLUPM) and individual selection (IS) using different mating designs. The genetic similarity matrix used in BLUPM was obtained by simulating 100 micro satellite markers (simple sequence repeats) using a similarity coefficient corresponding to the mean Euclidean distance between quantitative data. The […]

Four structures of data with different degree of genetic connectness and heterogeneity of parameters among herds: 1) heterogeneity of all parameters; 2) genetic means homogeneous and other parameters heterogeneous; 3) heterogeneity of phenotypic parameters and 4) no heterogeneity for herds, were simulated. After prediction of breeding values, the percentage of top animals common to group 1 (animals ranked by the true breeding values) and group 2 (animals ranked by the predicted breeding values) was calculated. For data with heterogeneity of […]

The influence of a priori information on animal genetic evaluation was studied using a simulated 3.000 centimorgans genome, for a single trait governed by 800 loci, with two alleles for locus, and heritability varying from 0.40 to 0.60. Three populations with different sizes were derived from the base-population constituted by 1.500 males and 1.500 females: POP1 (100 animals), POP2 (300 animals) and POP3 (1.600 animals). Three a priori information levels were considered: no-informative priors (PNI), slightly informative priors (PPI) and […]

Studies on simulation were carried out aiming to achieve a comparative analysis between the following variance component estimation methods: Restrict Maximum Likelihood (REML), Maximum Likelihood (ML) and Method III of Henderson. All of them were used as a reproducer model, and the REML method was also used as a animal model. The main objective was to verify the effect of the unbalanced data on the estimation of the variance components. A genomic, made of a single quantitative characteristic, ruled by […]