Status as of: 2020-04-09

DESCRIPTION OF NATIONAL GENETIC EVALUATION SYSTEMS

Country (or countries)	JAPAN	
Main trait group1
NOTE! Only one trait group per form!	Workability	
Breed(s)	Holstein	
Trait definition(s) and unit(s) of measurement2
Attach an appendix if needed	1)Temperament (1-5)
2) Milking speed (1-5)	
Method of measuring and collecting data	According to farmer's ranking (1 to 5), collected at the same time as type scores	
Time period for data inclusion	Classified since 2012 (all available classification records)	
Age groups (e.g. parities) included	Only first calving records	
Other criteria (data edits) for inclusion of records	Age of first calving 18-35 months. Normal lactation within 365 days after calving at classification.	
Criteria for extension of records (if applicable)	N/A	
Sire categories	All sires(practically no NS)	
Environmental effects3, pre-adjustments 	No pre-adjustments	
Method (model) of genetic evaluation3	ST BLUP AM 
	
Environmental effects3 in the genetic evaluation model	Fixed effects: age at classification, lactation stage at classification
Random effects: herd-year-month,	
Adjustment for heterogeneous variance in evaluation model	No adjustments	
Use of genetic groups and relationships	Unknown parents grouped by sex, country of origin and year	
Blending of foreign/Interbull information in evaluation	No	
Genetic parameters in the evaluation	See Appendix GE,	
System validation	Only official classification scores are used. Average and SD of  EBV (all/active cows, all/random sampled AI bulls/active bulls) and all effects in the evaluation models are compared to previous run. Animals that have extremely different EBV from previous run are identified. Related records of such animals are checked through to identify the reason.
Genetic trends are checked through Interbull method 3.	
Expression of genetic evaluations
If standardised (e.g. RBV), give standardisation formula in the appendix	Expressed as RBV with 100 added to SBV (standardized breeding value). The average is 100 and the standard deviation is 1.	
Definition of genetic reference base
Next base change	5-year stepwise, average EBV of cows born in 2010

2020	
Calculation of reliability	Using  multiple trait effective daughter contribution method (Liu et al., 2004)	
Criteria for official publication of evaluations	Must have both ≧15 daughters in ≧10 herds for both production and conformation. Recognized bulls by the national dairy sire progeny test program only. Interbull evaluations are published for foreign bulls with reliability >=75(milk) and >=60(overall conformation), however, treated as unofficial.	
Number of evaluations / publications per year	2/2, February, August	
Use in total merit index4	NO	
Anticipated changes in the near future	None	
Key reference on methodology applied		
Key organization: name, address, phone, fax, e-mail, web site	Member organization: Livestock Improvement Association of Japan, Inc
Ohno-building, 1-19-8, Kyobashi, Chuo-ku, Tokyo, 104-0031, JAPAN
Tel: +81-3-3561-8561
Fax: +81-3-3561-8165
Web: http://liaj.lin.go.jp/
E-mail: webmaster@liaj.lin.go.jp
National evaluation center: National Livestock Breeding Center, IAI
1 Odakurahara, Nishigo, Nishi-Shirakawa, Fukushima, 961-8511, JAPAN
Tel: +81-248-25-4904
Fax: +81-248-25-3982
Web: http://www.nlbc.go.jp/
Contact: data analysis div. to: nlbc_japan@nlbc.go.jp	
1) Either: Production (e.g. milk, fat, protein), Conformation, Health (e.g. mastitis resistance, milk somatic cell, resistance to diseases other than mastitis), Longevity, Calving (e.g. stillbirth, calving ease), Female fertility (e.g. non-return rate, interval between reproductive events, number of AI’s, heat strength), Workability (e.g. milking speed, temperament), Beef production, Efficiency (e.g. body weight, energy balance, body conditioning score), or Other traits.
2) Indicate frequencies per category if the trait is categorical and specify transformation of data if practiced.
3) Use abbreviations for most common effects (see document with list of abbreviations at http://www-interbull.slu.se/service_documentation/General/list_of_abbreviations.rtf) and indicate random (R) or fixed (F).
4) Please give economic weights and indicate how they are expressed (preferably in genetic standard deviation units).

Parameters for national genetic evaluations for workability traits as provided to Interbull

Country (or countries):	JAPAN	
Main trait group:	Workability	
Breed(s):	Holstein	

Trait	h2	Genetic
variance	official proof
standardisation formulaa	
Temperament	0.04	0.020		
Milking speed	0.09	0.028		
a	Expressed as follows:
StandEval=((eval-a)/b)+100 where a=mean of the base adjustment, b=standard deviation of the base.