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May 12, 2017

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= Executive Summary March- April 2017 =
March - April 2017

During March and April 2017 a number of Interbull meetings and conference calls were held and summarised at an Interbull Steering Committee meeting by Conference call on 19 April 2017. A summary of the relevant information and Steering Committee decisions is presented in this document.

'''New Services:'''

'''!InterGenomics-Holstein'''

The SC approved an !InterGenomics-Holstein Research Run to be conducted. To date, Ireland, Slovenia, Croatia, South Africa, Uruguay and Portugal have confirmed their participation. The aim is to present results and to discuss them in Tallinn in a follow up workshop in conjunction with the Interbull Annual Meeting at the end of August 2017.

'''!GenoEx-PSE'''

The DNA Working Group (WG), which was created at the time of the Chile meetings in October 2016, have continued the work required for the launch of two new ICAR/INTERBULL services. These include ICAR Accreditation of DNA Data Interpretation Centres, which will be offered through Service ICAR with the technical infrastructure at the Interbull Centre, and the Genotype Exchange Parentage SNP Exchange (!GenoEx-PSE) service, to be offered through the Interbull Centre. For the new ICAR accreditation service, the DNA WG is in the process of developing revised guidelines for carrying out parentage verification and/or parentage discovery based on SNP genotypes and test data files have been produced in preparation for the future launch. For !GenoEx-PSE, the Interbull Centre continues its development of the user interface and the programming of required database business rules. The DNA WG will provide a status update on each service at the upcoming ICAR meetings in Edinburgh, Scotland in June.

'''Genetic Traits'''

Interbull Centre is working together with WHFF to provide detailed information on the principles, processes and data flow to both the Interbull Service Users/National Genetic Evaluation Centres and WHFF members. The aim is to have a service in place by the end of 2017.

'''International SNP Evaluation'''

The SC has now approved – in principle – funding for an 18-month feasibility project on International SNP Evaluations as presented and discussed during the 2017 Interbull Technical Workshop in Ljubljana in February 2017.

'''__2017 Interbull Annual Meeting in Tallinn__'''

The 2017 Interbull Annual Meeting will take place in conjunction with the 67^th^ EAAP Annual meeting in Tallinn, Estonia. Interbull Business Meetings and Open Meetings are scheduled on 26 and 27 August 2017. Two joint Interbull-EAAP sessions are scheduled on 28 August 2017, addressing the themes: “Managing genetic diversity in cattle in the era of genomic selection” and “Genetic defects in cattle – identification, finding the mutation and managing it in breeding plans”. While the programme for the two joint sessions has been finalised, you are now invited to submit abstracts for the Interbull Open Meeting before 17:00 CET on 14 June 2017, in line with the following themes:

 . '''1. ''''''Impact of genomic pre-selection on N-GES and I-GES (MACE): ''' Possible sources of bias introduced through genomic pre-selection were discussed during the 2017 Technical Workshop in Ljubljana. During this session in the 2017 Interbull Open Meeting in Tallinn we like to invite papers that address quantification of bias in data used for, and the results of genetic evaluation models.

 . '''2. ''''''Model choice & Validation of GES in the genomic era: '''Choice of models that are robust to the biases introduced by the impact of genomic pre-selection.

 . '''3. ''''''Integration of new phenotypes/initiatives into (inter)national genetic/genomic evaluations: '''This theme provides the opportunity to share your experiences, activities and plans on the collection of data, and genetic/genomic evaluations of novel phenotypes such as methane emissions, feed intake data and health data. This may, for example, be related to 1) cross-border initiatives for new traits for Interbull evaluation, 2) the integration of data collected in research projects/farms, or 3) the importance of trait definitions, harmonization of traits and reliable flow of phenotype data.

Further details are available on [[http://www.interbull.org/ib/2017_interbull_meeting|www.interbull.org/ib/2017_interbull_meeting]].

Registration for the 2017 Interbull Annual Meeting in Tallinn is still possible via https://eaap2017.org/interbull/.

'''__2018 Interbull Annual Meeting in Auckland.__'''

The latest information on the 2018 Interbull Annual Meeting is available on www.interbull.org/ib/2018_annual _meeting. Registration for the 2018 ICAR, WCGALP and Interbull Meetings is possible on [[http://www.icar2018.nz|www.icar2018.nz]] and www.wcgalp.com/wcgalp18.