The use of milk mid-infrared spectroscopy to improve genomic prediction accuracy of serum biomarkers

Breeding objectives in the dairy industry have shifted from being solely focused on production to including fertility, animal health, and environmental impact. Increased serum concentrations of candidate biomarkers of health and fertility, such as β-hydroxybutyric acid (BHB), fatty acids, and urea are difficult and costly to measure, and thus limit the number of records. Accurate genomic prediction requires a large reference population. The inclusion of milk mid-infrared (MIR) spectroscopic predictions of biomarkers may increase genomic prediction accuracy of these traits. Our objectives were to (1) estimate the heritability of, and genetic correlations between, selected serum biomarkers and their respective MIR predictions, and (2) evaluate genomic prediction accuracies of either only measured serum traits, or serum traits plus MIR-predicted traits. The MIR-predicted traits were either fitted in a single trait model, assuming the measured trait and predicted trait were the same trait, or in a multitrait model, where measured and predicted trait were assumed to be correlated traits. We performed all analyses using relationship matrices constructed from pedigree (A matrix), genotypes (G matrix), or both pedigree and genotypes (H matrix). Our data set comprised up to 2,198 and 9,657 Holstein cows with records for serum biomarkers and MIR-predicted traits, respectively. Heritabilities of measured serum traits ranged from 0.04 to 0.07 for BHB, from 0.13 to 0.21 for fatty acids, and from 0.10 to 0.12 for urea. Heritabilities for MIR-predicted traits were not significantly different from those for the measured traits. Genetic correlations between measured traits and MIR-predicted traits were close to 1 for urea. For BHB and fatty acids, genetic correlations were lower and had large standard errors. The inclusion of MIR predicted urea substantially increased prediction accuracy for urea. For BHB, including MIR-predicted BHB reduced the genomic prediction accuracy, whereas for fatty acids, prediction accuracies were similar with either measured fatty acids, MIR-predicted fatty acids, or both. The high genetic correlation between urea and MIR-predicted urea, in combination with the increased prediction accuracy, demonstrated the potential of using MIR-predicted urea for genomic prediction of urea. For BHB and fatty acids, further studies with larger data sets are required to obtain more accurate estimates of genetic correlations.