Level of connectedness and reliability in international beef evaluation

This paper addresses two aspects of the reliability in the frame ofinternational beef evaluation: connectedness between countries andincrease of bulls' reliability. Connectedness was measured by the potential bias between genetic levels of countries, while bulls' reliability was computed following MTEDC method. These methodswere applied to a Limousine dataset combining weaning weights of purebred calves from three countries (France, Ireland and UnitedKingdom). The levels of connectedness were low compared to values computed for dairy genetic evaluations. Merging together data and pedigree of these countries leads to a small increase of reliability for France and a much larger one for Ireland and United Kingdom. The results highlight the main interestsin Interbeef evaluation: providing EBVs of foreign bulls without local progeny and increasing EBV reliability of bulls already used in the country.