Efficient weighting methods for genomic best linear unbiased prediction (BLUP) adaption to the genetic architectures of quantitative traits

Genomic best linear unbiased prediction (GBLUP) assumes equal variance for all marker effects, which is suitable for traits that conform to the infinitesimal model. For traits controlled by major genes, Bayesian methods with shrinkage priors or genome-wide association study (GWAS) methods can be used to identify causal variants effectively. The information from Bayesian/GWAS methods can be used to construct the weighted genomic relationship matrix (G). However, it remains unclear which methods perform best for traits varying in genetic architecture. Therefore, we developed several methods to optimize the performance of weighted GBLUP and compare them with other available methods using simulated and real datasets. First, two types of methods (marker effects with local-shrinkage or normal prior) were used to obtain test statistics and estimates for each marker effect. Second, three weighted G matrices were constructed based on the marker information from the first step: (1) the genomic-fe...