Investigation of the genotype by environment interaction between Greece and some exporting countries of semen from progeny tested bulls
1994
Georgoudis, A. | Abas, Z. | Zervas, N. (Aristotelion Univ., Thessaloniki (Greece). Faculty of Agriculture. Dept. of Animal Production. Lab. of Animal Husbandry)
The purpose of the present study was to investigate the existence of the genotype by environment interaction, regarding the milk production between Greece and the countries of origin of the progeny tested bulls, which have been imported as frozen semen and used in the National Dairy Genetic Improvement Programme. The available milk production and reproduction data came from 62888 cows of the three main recorded breeds, Holstein - Friesian, B. Swiss and Simmental. Totally, 131751 lactation records were used in the analysis. The data included also 86 foreign bulls which had daughters with known records. From these bulls 33 originated from USA, 16 from Canada, 17 from N. Zealand, from Germany and 7 from France. The model used for the evaluation was a single trait (milk production) with repeated records, additive genetic and repeatability Animal Model with genetic groups. From the correlations between the estimated genetic values and the ranking of the bulls in the different environments, it is concluded that the genetic values in the countries of origin not always are efficient predictors of the milk production of their future daughters under the Greek environmental conditions. It is imposed to improve the management conditions in the Greek dairy production units, in order to benefit in an efficient way from the genetic gain achieved in other countries.
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