R (Renzo) Bonifazi

R (Renzo) Bonifazi

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I am a researcher at the Animal Breeding and Genomics group at Wageningen Livestock Research (WLR). My current work focuses on different projects related to animal breeding and genetic diversity in livestock populations, among which:

  • Biology-driven genomic predictions for feed efficiency using whole-genome sequence data within and across breeds (this work is conducted within the BovReg project, https://www.bovreg.eu/).
  • Investigating the impact of genomic selection on genetic diversity of local cattle breeds across Europe (this work is conducted within the Rumigen project, https://rumigen.eu/).
  • Performing genomic evaluations for feed efficiency in Dutch dairy cattle.
  • Investigating multi-breed multi-trait genomic predictions in cattle (this work is conducted within Breed4Food, http://breed4food.com/)
  • Estimation of genetic parameters in aquaculture species.

Previously, I obtained my PhD at Wageningen University & Research (WUR) in 2022 with a thesis entitled “International Genetic and Genomic Evaluations of Beef Cattle” in a project collaboration between WUR, the International Committee for Animal Recording – ICAR (Rome, Italy), Interbeef (ICAR Working Group), the International Bull Evaluation Service – Interbull (Uppsala, Sweden), and national beef cattle breeding organisations.

During my PhD, we aimed to improve and further develop methodologies for international beef cattle evaluations led by Interbeef by addressing various challenges, mainly related to:

  1. the estimation of across-country genetic correlations (rg) and their impact on the international estimated breeding values;
  2. the inclusion of national genomic information
  3. the development of an official procedure for participating countries to integrate the distributed international estimated breeding values back into their national evaluations.