International genetic evaluations of the Icelandic horse

The International Federation of Icelandic Horse Associations (FEIF) has harmonized a common breeding goal and a standard form of evaluating the conformation and riding ability traits of Icelandic breeding horses on a scale of linear scores. An important step towards global genetic evaluation of the Icelandic horse has been initiated. A global pedigree database has been established containing 190,000 horses with unique identification numbers, whereof 20,000 horses have records from FEIF breeding tests were breeding horses have been evaluated by authorized judges. The material has been used for estimation of genetic parameters and for studying genetic connectedness across country. The genetic correlations between traits evaluated in different time periods and countries have been studied. The genetic model was validated by regressions of solutions from the complete data on solutions from randomly sub sampled data (method R). An animal model MT-BLUP using records from Iceland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland has been implemented for genetic evaluations of all horses included in the data base. In total 30 traits were included. The information on pedigree, colour, owner, test-results and EBVs is stored in a SQL database and can be accessed on the Web by Java Server Pages for subscribers on URL: http://www.worldfengur.com