Programs offering EPD Estimation for Alpacas in the US and Internationally
By Dr Sara Via
Alpaca breeders in both Canada and Australia + New Zealand have begun programs to estimate genetic values for individual alpacas (either EPDs or breeding values). EPDs are currently being estimated for US breeders who belong to the Ideal Alpaca Community (IAC) by Dr. David Notter who is a professor at the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Virginia Tech. Dr. Notter also calculates the statistics for the United States National Sheep Improvement Program (NSIP). The IAC is a private effort that is open to any interested alpaca breeder. Another North American program, organized by Dr. Wayne Jarvis and called GAIN no longer seems to be active.
Overview:
1&2_Canada. The Canadian AHEAD (Alpaca Herd Evaluation for Advancement) program is currently limited to estimation of Within Flock EPDs, that is, estimates of relative genetic value of alpacas within single herds (what the National Sheep Improvement Program calls FEPDs, see Folder #2). This limitation arises because they do not have a set of “reference sires” who are siring crias on a number of different farms. This provides what the sheep breeders call “connectedness” (see Folder #2), and it is necessary in order to be able to remove effects of environmental differences among farms. Until the program has been in place longer, so that more connectedness can be built by selling animals among herds, or even better, defining a reference set of herdsires, breeders will only be able to use the results of the Canadian program to compare animals within their own herds.
See also this second article
In the Canadian program, data are taken on a variety of traits. Their data acquisition is very awkward, requiring breeders to complete written forms, then transcribe the data to electronic forms for submission.
3_Australia. The Australian and New Zealand program AGE (Across-herd Genetic Evaluation) is able to produce estimates of breeding values (not EPDs, but similar) across herds, using the pedigree information from the national registry. They do not have a specific set of “reference sires”, but evidently they have enough connectedness among farms to be able to remove environmental effects. In this program, breeders choose which traits to measure from a list including fleece traits (some objective, some on a subjective scale of 1-5), body size, various fitness traits and disease susceptibility. However, the emphasis is the objectively measured fleece traits. It is important to understand that the quality of the estimated genetic values is only as good as the reliability of the data and the number of breeders who send in information for each trait. In my opinion, asking breeders to measure too many traits, and on an optional basis, is likely to erode the consistency and quality of the data. The Australians have data from two years, 2006 and 2007, and they publish the distributions of breeding values for each trait.
4 North America USA
GAIN programme
Dr. Wayne Jarvis established a program www.alpacagenetics.com called The G.A.I.N. (The Genetic Alpaca Improvement Program) but we believe that this program is no longer active.
IAC programme
The other US program is championed by Mike Safley. Mike established the Ideal Alpaca Community (IAC) as a group open to any alpaca breeder, their collective purpose is to raise genetically superior alpacas that produce high volumes of fine fleece..
IAC members submit fleece samples each year on all of their alpacas to Yocom-McColl for measurement, and the data are sent directly from Yocom-McColl to Virginia Tech for analysis. Members receive an enhanced histogram containing 12 measurements and you can view a sample here
Currently, only fleece traits are included in the analysis. For 2007, over 3000 samples were collected, measured and submitted together with pedigree information. Within the IAC, there is a group of elite reference herdsires known as the Studmasters. These herdsires are jointly owned by members, and travel between members farms throughout the breeding season. This commonality of sires produces the connectedness required by the EPD analysis. In future, additional Studmasters will be added from members’ herds to further increase connectivity within the overall “virtual herd”.
Breedings, however, are not limited to Studmaster males, so as time goes on, many more excellent herdsires will be incorporated into the IAC analysis. Because the IAC is an active marketing community, alpaca sales between members also increases connectivity. There is much more information about EPDs and the IAC in general including members on the IAC website: www.ideal-alpaca.com
NB The IAC is expected to release its first EPDs in the summer of 2008 and once they are available a link will be added from the EPD Library.
5 Alpaca Registry Inc
The Alpaca Registry Inc is investigating the Use of EPDs
Here is an article from One Voice
This article was written by Dr Sara Via
(Disclosure—Sara Via and Adrian Stewart are both members of the IAC)