Assessing Accuracy of Genomic Predictions for Resistance to Infectious Hematopoietic Necrosis Virus With Progeny Testing of Selection Candidates in a Commercial Rainbow Trout Breeding Population

Infectious hematopoietic necrosis (IHN) is an economically important disease of salmonid fish caused by the IHN virus (IHNV). Under industrial aquaculture settings, IHNV can cause substantial mortality and losses. Actually, there is no confirmed and cost-effective method for IHNV control. Clear Springs Foods, Inc. has been performing family-based selective breeding to increase genetic resistance to IHNV in their rainbow trout breeding program. In an earlier study, we used siblings cross-validation to estimate the accuracy of genomic prediction (GP) for IHNV resistance in this breeding population. In the present report, we used empirical progeny testing data to evaluate whether genomic selection (GS) can improve the accuracy of breeding value predictions over traditional pedigree-based best linear unbiased predictions (PBLUP). We found that the GP accuracy with single-step GBLUP (ssGBLUP) outperformed PBLUP by 15% (from 0.33 to 0.38). Furthermore, we found that ssGBLUP had higher GP accuracy than weighted ssGBLUP (wssGBLUP) and single-step Bayesian multiple regression (ssBMR) models with BayesB and BayesC priors which supports our previous findings that the underlying liability of genetic resistance against IHNV in this breeding population might be polygenic. Our results show that GS can be more effective than either the traditional pedigree-based PBLUP model or the marker-assisted selection approach for improving genetic resistance against IHNV in this commercial rainbow trout population.