Abstract:

Highly fecund aquaculture species provide more opportunities to optimize genotyping effort in genomic selection programs through selective genotyping and pre-selection than other livestock species. The aim of this study is to optimize pre-selection in a simulated fish breeding program to achieve the highest genetic gain per genotyped fish under restricted inbreeding. We simulated breeding programs in R with preselection among all selection candidates, between full sib families and within full sib families and several pre-selection intensities within each of the strategies. Pre-selection always reduces genetic gain. However, when genotyping costs are taken into account, genetic gain per genotyped fish can be increased with preselection. Pre-selecting 40% of the candidates from all available selection candidates produced the highest additional genetic gain per genotyped fish.