Simmental breeders utilising ABRI’s direct-to-breeder Simmental BREEDPLAN service are set to benefit from several enhancements being released in the April 2025 Simmental BREEDPLAN analysis. These enhancements ensure that Simmental BREEDPLAN is making best use of the pedigree, performance and genomic information being collected by Simmental breeders and improve the predictive ability of Simmental BREEDPLAN EBVs.   

These enhancements include:

1. Increased weighting on genomic relatedness information in Single-Step BREEDPLAN

The Single-Step BREEDPLAN analysis uses information about the relationship between animals from two different sources, being pedigree records and genomic (DNA) information. To do this successfully, the relationship information from the two different sources needs to be combined. Recent work conducted by AGBU has shown significant advantages in moving to a higher weighting of genomic relatedness versus pedigree relatedness. With the implementation of an increased weighting on genomic relatedness in the April 2025 Simmental BREEDPLAN analysis, some changes in the EBVs reported for individual animals have occurred, especially for those with a genotype but no performance records. Increased accuracy in the EBVs reporting for genotyped animals, especially those currently reporting at low to mid accuracy, have also occurred as expected. These outcomes vary across traits.

Please note that the increased weighting on genomic relatedness versus pedigree relatedness does not mean that genotypes are now more important than phenotypes. The value of performance data within the BREEDPLAN analysis remains unchanged, and performance data remains an important source of information to the Simmental BREEDPLAN analysis.

2. Update to BreedObject Selection Indexes

The Selection Indexes published for Simmental BREEDPLAN have been updated. This was done to bring them into line with current commercial Simmental production systems, reflect economic changes and account for the genetic progress that the breed has made. Consequently, Simmental breeders will observe greater spread in selection index values, as well as some re-ranking of animals for each selection index. Further details on the new Simmental BREEDPLAN selection indexes can be found here.