|
|
In Sweden the breeding of the Standardbred trotter is led by the Swedish
Trotting Association (STC). The breeding goal for the Swedish Standardbred
is a fast, sound, sustainable, well tempered and good gaited racing trotter
of a highly competitive international standard. In order to reach this goal
STC employs the unique competence of IHBC for genetic consultation and for
genetic evaluation of all animals within the breed. The implementation of
the BLUP (Best Linear Unbiased Prediction) for evaluating breeding values of
stallions on the basis of the racing performance of their offspring started
in 1984 in cooperation with researchers at the Swedish University of
Agricultural Sciences (SLU). Since 1992 an animal model BLUP procedure has
been applied for annual genetic evaluation of all the animals within the
breed, simultaneously for six traits of racing performance. The resulting
combined index values are officially published as an aid for effective
selection of stallions and brood-mares within the population. The
development of computing procedures for the genetic evaluation of Swedish
Standardbred trotters and the routine computation of index of breeding
values has been the main cornerstone in the activity of IHBC. The genetic
evaluation procedure by the AM-BLUP method in 2007 included about 220 thousand
Standardbred trotters in total. In addition AM-BLUP genetic evaluation of
nearly 100 thousand "Cold-blooded" North-Swedish and Norwegian trotters (Nordic trotter) was performed by
IHBC.
IHBC has developed Java sevlets for STC
(Servlets.)
For scientific references see
Curriculum vitae
(Žorvaldur Įrnason)
For an illustration of the impact of the application scientific breeding
tools for genetic improvement of racing performance please look at the figure
below showing the genetic trend in racing performance index in the Swedish
Standardbred trotter.
|
