INTERBULL EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

NO. 2023-3: JULY - SEPTEMBER 2023

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This executive summary reports the latest information about the Interbull Centre and important decisions taken during the Interbull Business Meeting of 26 and 27 August 2023, by the Interbull Technical Committee in their meetings of 25 and 26 August 2023, and by the Steering Committee in their meetings on 25 and 27 August, and 21 September 2023.

2023 Interbull Meeting

The 2023 Interbull Annual Meeting was held in conjunction with EAAP from 26 to 28 August 2023, in Lyon, France.

A big thank you to all speakers and participants, who have made this year’s Meeting an excellent one!

Online Documentation (Interbull 2023 Annual Meeting)

Public materials for the Business Meeting are available on: https://interbull.org/ib/2023_bm_lyon. Power point presentations of the Open Meetings and joint Interbull-EAAP session are available on the Interbull website. Please note that only the presentations of presenters who have granted permissions will be available: • Open Meeting: https://interbull.org/ib/2023_lyon_scientific_programme. • Joint session: https://interbull.org/ib/eaap_interbull_joint2023. • The Proceedings of the 2023 Interbull Meeting will be published in Interbull Bulletin no. 59 from December 2023. • Don’t forget to check out the “Interbull Hall of Fame” for pictures of some highlights of the event, on http://interbull30years.blogspot.com/.

Interbull Steering Committee Membership

During the Interbull Business Meeting on 26 August 2023, incumbent SC members Gert Pedersen Aamand, Urs Schnyder and Gerben de Jong were proposed as Interbull Steering Committee members for new 4-year terms, and subsequently endorsed by the ICAR Board in October.

During the Interbull SC Meeting on 27 August 2023, Matthew Shaffer and Brian Van Doormaal were re-elected as respectively Chair and Vice-Chair of the Interbull SC for 4-year terms.

Interbull SC Composition:

ITC members

In May 2023, an expression of interest for being part of the Interbull Technical Committee (ITC) was issued. A pleasing number of applications were received. Jan-Thijs van Kaam (ANAFIBJ, Italy) and Andres Lagarra (CDCB, USA) were selected and approved by the SC as new ITC members. They joined the committee for the first time during the meetings the committee had prior to the annual meeting in Lyon.

Interbull ITC Composition:

Interbull Service and Service Fees

The Business Funding Model Task Force (BFMTF) was established to find an alternative MACE fee calculation to overcome various issues, including the challenge of collecting timely information from ICAR regarding number of cows in milk recording scheme and the negative trend seen in many countries concerning the number of cows. The current MACE service fee is based on the number of cows in milk recording in each country. The proposed approach shifts to the increase in the number of daughters contributing to the MACE milk evaluation. The proposal has been circulated to the community in August and presented during the Business Meeting in Lyon. The SC approved this proposal in their meeting on September 21, with countries to receive a view of what the new fees would look like before the Business Meeting in Bled next May. For more detailed information, the distributed paper can be found at https://interbull.org/ib/2023_bm_lyon The new fee structure will then become official in 2025.

Introduction of Genetic Traits

In recent years, the Interbull Centre developed the capacity for interested organisations to exchange gene test results for various monogenetic characteristics. These mainly include undesirable genetic recessive traits but may also include other favourable characteristics such as polled, beta casein, kappa casein, etc. In general, an accepted external international organization, usually a breed federation, is considered the responsible party for identifying those genetic traits included in the international exchange services provided by the Interbull Centre.

The introduction of the Genetic Traits Exchange services commenced with the Holstein breed and three countries have been participating, namely DEU, GBR and NLD. The Interbull Centre has worked during 2022/2023 with Brown Swiss InterGenomics participants to develop the service for Brown Swiss - in addition to the current sharing of male genotypes and international genomic evaluations. The Interbull Steering Committee has now decided that: 1. The Genetic Trait Exchange Service will be made available to Brown Swiss before the end of 2023. 2. The following fee will be applied, starting in 2024: €1000 for participation for one breed and €500 for each subsequent breed. 3. The relevant agreements and sections in the Interbull Code of Practice have been updated in line with the above decision a. Description of service (https://interbull.org/ib/cop_appendix_xi.) b. Agreement (https://interbull.org/ib/agreement_genetic_traits_exchange)

Interbull Services

Dairy evaluations: MACE, GMACE and InterGenomics August 2023 Routine evaluations (2308r) have been completed according to schedule. September 2023 test evaluations (2309t) have been completed according to schedule.

Beef evaluations: Interbeef October 2023 Routine evaluation (2310r) is currently under way. During this evaluation the first official international results for carcass traits will be provided to participating countries. An extra Interbeef test evaluation (2310t) is also currently under way to welcome Norway as a new participating country in the international evaluation for Adjusted Weaning Weight.

Revision of Type of proofs codes: The Interbull Technical Committee has decided to set up a technical working group to review the different type of proofs codes that are currently in place for MACE. Such coding has been set up on the early stage of MACE evaluation and have not been reviewed in a long while. In light of the changes in the industry due to the rapid development of genomic evaluations, it would be good to review them to see if they are still appropriate or need some update. Aim of the working group will be to:

- Review the current coding and assess their relevance

- Consider if there should be the need to account for new coding describing new scenarios

- Make it clearer to countries on the criteria to follow for assigning such coding

- Consider the implications such new/revised coding will have in the requirements for inclusion into the MACE

Interbull Centre is currently reaching out to key users, both connected with the industry and also aware of the different Interbull coding and their meanings, to set up such working group.

Research & Development:

Interbull Genomic Reliability (GREL) WG (Chair: Zengting Liu)

The aim of the working group is to provide recommendation to countries, having a single step evaluation, on which method would be best to use. In this regard, the method developed by the working group in 2017, presenting a way to calculate the EDC reliability as the sum of the EDCconv and the EDCgain for all genomic and not genomic animals, is still considered as the base recommendation. The above methodology is already included among the available Interbull recommendations: • https://interbull.org/static/web/A_supplementary_document_to_the_Interbull_genomic_reliability_method-1.pdf • https://interbull.org/static/web/A_technical_document_on_derivation_and_application_of_adjustment.pdf.

Interbull Trend Validation Tests WG (Chair: Paul VanRaden)

An enhanced version of the new GEBVtest software was presented during the Interbull Technical Workshop held in Rome in February 2023 (https://journal.interbull.org/index.php/ib/issue/view/69). The software has been, since then, further improved with the feedback received during the technical workshop and it will be made available to countries in 2024. Before the end of the current year a “roll-in-production” plan will be also distributed to all organisation.

Interbull Genomic pre-selection and Future MACE WG (Chair: Pete Sullivan)

The objective of the working group is to develop a new MACE model that will account for genomic pre-selection (GPS) effects on the Mendelian sampling distribution of the genomic pre-selected AI sires. A preliminary version of the “GPS-MACE” model has successfully been tested on both simulated and real data (biased national EBV input used in MACE). This gave promising results, as presented during the 2023 Interbull Technical Workshop (https://journal.interbull.org/index.php/ib/issue/view/69). The WG will continue developing and testing the “GPS-MACE” model, with the aim of running a pilot test in late 2024.

New Traits Pipeline (Chair: Gerben de Jong)

The working group has further reviewed the different information provided by organisations in the PREP “other traits” electronic form. In addition to the three traits (Retained placenta, hypocalcaemia/milk fever, gestation length) identified and discussed during the Interbull Technical Workshop, held in Rome in February 2023, two more traits groups seemed to show a potential for an international evaluation: feed intake and claw health related traits. Following the Interbull annual meeting, organisations were kindly asked to provide information on PREP regarding such new identified traits until September 15. A new analysis of all collected information will be performed after the above mentioned date and a report will be provided to SC who will then decide on the steps forward.

2024 Interbull Annual Meeting

The 2024 Interbull Annual Meeting will be held in conjunction with ICAR from 19-24 May 2024, in Bled, Slovenia.

Interbull Business Meetings and Open Meeting will be organised on Monday 20 and Tuesday 21 May 2024.

Information about the venue and registration will become available on the ICAR event page https://icar2024.si/ Specific information about the Interbull meeting will be made available on the Interbull event page https://interbull.org/ib/2024_icar_interbull