Single-step genomic evaluation improves accuracy of breeding value predictions for resistance to infectious pancreatic necrosis virus in rainbow trout

The aim of this study was to compare the accuracy of breeding values (EBVs) predicted using the traditional pedigree based Best Linear Unbiased Prediction (PBLUP) and the single-step genomic Best Linear Unbiased Prediction (ssGBLUP) for resistance against infectious pancreatic necrosis virus (IPNV) in rainbow trout. A total of 2278 animals were challenged against IPNV and 768 individuals were genotyped using a 57 K single nucleotide polymorphism array for rainbow trout. Accuracies for both methods were assessed using five-fold cross-validation. The heritabilities were higher for PBLUP compared to ssGBLUP. The ssGBLUP accuracies outperformed PBLUP in 7 and 11% for days to death and binary survival, respectively. The ssGBLUP could be an alternative approach to improve the accuracy of breeding values for resistance against infectious pancreatic necrosis virus in rainbow trout, using information from genotyped and non-genotyped animals. •We assessed the accuracy of GEBV for IPNV resistance using ssGBLUP in rainbow trout.•The heritability for days to death and binary survival were 0.25 and 0.24, respectively.•The relative increase in accuracies compared to PBLUP reached up to 11%.•ssGBLUP can improve the accuracy of GEBV for IPNV resistance in rainbow trout.