DOI: 10.1051/gse:2001128

Genet. Sel. Evol. 33 (2001) 473-486

A sampling method for estimating the accuracy of predicted breeding values in genetic evaluation

Marie-Noëlle Fouilloux^a and Denis Laloë<sup>b

a</sup>  Institut de l'élevage, Station de génétique quantitative et appliquée, Institut national de la recherche agronomique, Domaine de Vilvert, 78352 Jouy-en-Josas cedex, France
^b  Station de génétique quantitative et appliquée, Institut national de la recherche agronomique, Domaine de Vilvert, 78352 Jouy-en-Josas cedex, France

(Received 15 November 2000; accepted 30 May 2001)

Abstract
A sampling-based method for estimating the accuracy of estimated breeding values using an animal model is presented. Empirical variances of true and estimated breeding values were estimated from a simulated n-sample. The method was validated using a small data set from the Parthenaise breed with the estimated coefficient of determination converging to the true values. It was applied to the French Salers data file used for the 2000 on-farm evaluation (IBOVAL) of muscle development score. A drawback of the method is its computational demand. Consequently, convergence can not be achieved in a reasonable time for very large data files. Two advantages of the method are that a) it is applicable to any model (animal, sire, multivariate, maternal effects...) and b) it supplies off-diagonal coefficients of the inverse of the mixed model equations and can therefore be the basis of connectedness studies.

Key words: genetic evaluation / accuracy / sampling methods

Correspondence and reprints: Marie-Noëlle Fouilloux E-mail: marie-noelle.fouilloux@inst-elevage.asso.fr

© INRA, EDP Sciences 2001