Project Grant 20266701546691

The Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture awarded $650,000 to the University of Georgia Research Foundation, Inc. on September 15, 2026, under the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) program to develop multi-trait threshold-linear statistical models for analyzing categorical and linear traits jointly in livestock genetic evaluations.

The project will develop theoretically sound and computationally efficient frameworks for large-scale genetic and genomic evaluation of multiple categorical fitness traits—including health, fertility, disease, and welfare indicators—under BLUP and single-step genomic BLUP (SSGBLUP) methods. The work will extend this theory to compute and approximate the accuracy of genomic breeding values in threshold-linear models and apply the framework to genome-wide association studies (GWAS) for multiple categorical traits. Current mixed-model approaches can accommodate only one categorical trait, limiting the industry's ability to conduct accurate genetic gain predictions across the complex, multi-categorical data now collected by breeding companies and associations. The deliverables will provide practical tools for U.S. livestock industry use in estimating breeding values, accuracies, and performing GWAS on large genomic datasets containing multiple categorical traits.

Performance occurs at Athens, Georgia. The period of performance extends from September 15, 2026 through September 14, 2030. This is a Project Grant, assistance type.