522 Developing innovative digital technology and genomic approaches to livestock genetic improvement in developing countries.

Genomic selection has resulted in rapid rates of genetic gains especially in dairy cattle in developed countries and well established conventional genetic evaluations systems have provided the strong foundation. The basic building blocks for data recording and genetic evaluation are lacking in most developing countries. The application of digital technologies such as mobile phones opens pathways to overcome some of the barriers for data collection. Digital systems have been used in projects such as the African Dairy Genetic Gains in Eastern Africa to capture data thus overcoming huge organizational infrastructure and costs. Genotypic data in smallholder systems offer quick wins in terms of parent verification, breed composition determination and genetic evaluation using G. LD SNP panels have been used for determination of breed composition and parent verification for crossbreds in Eastern Africa, beef breeds and small ruminants in South Africa. The few studies on genomic prediction in developing countries are mostly in dairy and beef cattle and are characterized by small reference populations (≈1000 to 2000 animals). The gains in accuracy range from 0.33 to 0.45 in Eastern Africa crossbred cattle but much higher at 0.5 to 0.6 for milk, fat and protein in yields for Gyr and Guzera in Brazil. The use of LD chips accompanied by imputation has been applied in several studies and loss in accuracy has been minimal. Specialized LD chips such as the INDUSCHIP consisting of 45700 SNPs sampled from HD genotypes of mostly four indicus breeds and their taurine crosses in India have been developed and used for genomic prediction. The use of sexed semen of genomically proven young bulls could substantially improve profitability of small holder farmers and therefore offers prospect for farmers buying-in into genomic breeding programs.