Quantifying the value of genetically specific organic lines within dairy breeding

Summary

In animal breeding, breeding goals are defined to give relative importance to certain traits, usually based on economic weights (Groen et al., 1997). In Denmark, Finland, and Sweden, the Nordic Total Merit index (NTM), based on common economic weights, is used as the breeding selection tool in dairy production (Kargo et al., 2014). Breeding goals are defined for specific production systems and circumstances. To develop a breeding goal that farmers want to use, it is important to take the objectives of farmers into account. Setting up a breeding goal that does not correspond to the preferences of farmers will make little sense (Nielsen et al., 2014). These preferences can be defined by using farmer choice experiments, for example using conjoint analysis (Tano et al., 2003), a partial profile design (Nielsen and Amer, 2007; Martin-Collado et al., 2015), or pairwise rankings using preference-based tools like 1000Minds (Byrne et al., 2012). Several studies have shown heterogeneity in farmers’ preferences for breeding goal traits (Duguma et al., 2011; Ragkos and Abas, 2015), and this may be linked to different cattle production systems (Sy et al., 1997; Ouma et al., 2007). If farmer preferences are heterogeneous, due to differences in production system, or in farm or farmer characteristics, it might be necessary to create multiple breeding goals within a population (Nielsen and Amer, 2007).