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Executive Summary June - September 2018

June - September 2018

This document contains a summary of the relevant information and decisions of the Interbull Steering Committee (SC) meetings as well as of other meetings that were held during the period June – August 2018.

Governance

Following approval by the ICAR Board of a new set of Terms of Reference (ToR) for the INTERBULL Sub-Committee (www.icar.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Terms-of-Reference-for-the-Interbull-Sub-Committee.pdf), the Interbull SC approved new Rules of Procedures for the Interbull Committee at its SC meeting on 26 August 2018 in Dubrovnik www.interbull.org/ib/termsofreference.

During the same meeting, the SC elected for the first time, a vice chair: The first vice chair is Matthew Shaffer, who has taken up this post with immediate effect, and will succeed Reinhard Reents as chairman of the SC during the Interbull Annual Meeting in June 2019.

Reinhard Reents previously announced that he has decided to retire from the Interbull Steering Committee at the end of his current term. In June 2019 Reinhard will have served 20 years in the SC, of which 13 years as chairman. Matthew Shaffer is the CEO of DataGene in Australia, and is an SC member, representing Oceania, since 2016. He was a member of the Word Holstein Friesian Federation (WHFF) Council from 2005 until 2016, of which he served the last 4 years as President. From 2013 to 2016 he was also the Chair of the ICAR “Breed Associations” Working Group and a member of the ICAR “Parentage Recording” Working Group.

Interbull Meetings

1. Interbull-ADSA Symposium: Knoxville, Tennessee, USA, 27 June 2018
   

The Interbull-ADSA Symposium “Phenotyping and Genetics in the New Era of Sensor Data from Automation”, hosted six speakers covering a variety of topics related to automatic data recording and big data analysis, and drew an audience of approximately 300.

Presentations are available on www.interbull.org/ib/2018_interbull_adsa_ppt.

• b. 2018 Interbull Technical Workshop in Dubrovnik, Croatia: 25 and 26 August 2018
  

Sixty-five people participated in the Interbull Technical Workshop in Dubrovnik on 25 and 26 August 2018, during which “SNPMace”, “InterGenomics-Holstein”, “Mendelian Sampling Test” and “Genomic Reliability” were presented and discussed. Presentations are available on: www.interbull.org/ib/2018_interbull_ws. Interbull Committees, participating countries and Interbull Centre Staff are working on the follow up of these topics, and they will be addressed during the period leading up to the 2019 Interbull Annual Meeting.

• c. Interbull-EAAP Symposium: Dubrovnik, Croatia: 27 August 2018
  

EAAP and Interbull once again organised very well attended joint sessions on the first day of EAAP:

• Cow genotyping for genomic selection, management and marketing in cattle
  

• Optimization of a genomic breeding program for small-sized cattle populations
  

Presentations are available on: www.interbull.org/ib/2018_itb_eaap_presentation

InterGenomics-Holstein

The latest InterGenomics-Holstein run concentrated on increasing the InterGenomics-Holstein Reference Population. This was achieved through the data supplied by two additional countries, Israel and South Korea, as well as additional data from the original countries (Ireland, Slovenia, Uruguay, Portugal, Croatia and South Africa). During the 2018 Interbull Technical Workshop, the countries involved in InterGenomics-Holstein shared their enthusiasm on the results of this run and progress since the first run in 2017. It was however recognised that a number of technical issues (such as validation and reliabilities) will still need to be addressed. These have been discussed by the Interbull Technical Committee, and will be taken forward by – in the first instance - the Interbull Centre, in order to discuss by the end of 2018 the next steps towards a new routine service for Holstein, following the concept of research runs, pilot runs and a successful test run.

GenoEx-PSE and ICAR Accreditation for DNA Data Interpretation Centres

Thirteen organisations have made use of this year’s introductory application fee for the ICAR Accreditation for DNA Data Interpretation Centres (https://bit.ly/2PVMewL). This accreditation is a pre-requisite for organisations joining the GenoEx-PSE service (GenoEx.org) that was launched in June 2018. The Interbull Steering Committee acknowledges both the importance of GenoEx-PSE users being accredited, as well as the relevance of several organisations joining GenoEx-PSE before added value may be expected. It has therefore been decided that during 2018 no GenoEx-PSE service fees will be charged to those accredited organisations joining GenoEx-PSE in 2018.

Patent for Artificial Selection Method and Reagents

Since a patent for “Artificial Selection Method and Reagents” (estimating an animal's breeding value with the use of DNA variants) had been issued to Agriculture Victoria Services PTY (VAS) in Australia, New Zealand and Canada, Interbull, ICAR and the EFFAB Patent Watch started collaborating in 2017 to oppose the issuing of this patent in the EU. The VAS Patent has now however been accepted by the EU Patent Office and it is expected that it will be granted in the next months. This new situation has been discussed within the Interbull SC, and the SC will continue to discuss with EFFAB Patent Watch and ICAR on how best to deal with this new situation.

Interbull Annual Meetings

• 2019, Cincinnati, Ohio, USA (with ADSA): 22-24 June 2019
  

• 2020, Leeuwarden, The Netherlands (with ICAR): Interbull Meeting dates tbc
  

• 2021, Davos, Switzerland (with EAAP): 28-30 August 2021