EuroGenomics Cooperative drives progress in bovine breeding

Seven key players of the bovine genetic improvement have established a European cooperative aimed at exchanging genomic data in Holstein breed, improving genomic evaluation techniques, and increasing the effectiveness of bovine breeding. The name of the organisation is: EuroGenomics Coöperative U.A..

Based on the strong principle that the genetics is owned by breeders, a legal entity under the form of a cooperative has been formed to optimise processes around mutual policy making and joint execution of activities. Within the cooperative, the partners focus on driving genetic progress by:

genotyping for breeding and herd management;
sharing of genetic data for reliable traits;
performing applied research;
genomic evaluation of animals based on the joint European reference population.

High reliability

The official genomic breeding values based on the EuroGenomics reference population are the most reliable predictions of a bull’s breeding qualities under European production systems.

Starting in 2009, Holstein cattle breeders in Europe have opted to pool their genomic data intothe reference population of EuroGenomics. This is now the largest one in Holstein breed with more than 33,000 genotyped bulls (*) all daughter proven across Europe.

The EuroGenomics efforts increased the reliability of genomic breeding values in 11 countries comprising more than 10 million of Holstein cows: Finland, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Luxembourg, Poland, France and Spain. Starting in 2009.

(*) Contributors of the EuroGenomics reference population: Allice (on behalf of EVOLUTION, Origen Plus, Gènes Diffusion), CRV, Viking Genetics, vit and DHV, Conafe, Genomika Polska (on behalf of the Polish federation of cattle breeders and dairy farmers and the 4 Polish AI centres).