Genetic Gain
In the meat breeding program, where 2 traits were improved, genomic information increased AGG by 1 to 17.9% depending on the scenario. Genomic scenarios were most efficient when a meat phenotype was combined with genomic information to select or preselect elite sires, except when selection was performed using independent culling levels. When optimized designs were compared, the purely GS was only 5.5% superior to conventional selection. This demonstrates the importance of a phenotype, in situations where it is recorded at an early age and when the reference population is small (nref = 2,000). Our results are consistent with the decreased performance of independent culling methods compared with index (Hazel and Lush, 1942). For all scenarios of the meat breeding program, genomic superiority was less than that reported in dairy cattle studies (e.g., Schaeffer, 2006; Konig and Swalve, 2009; Pryce et al., 2010) mainly due to some limitations in population parameters such as few individuals in breeding units, low use of AI, and small progeny testing capacity, which negatively affect selection intensity and accuracy.