AUTHOR=Gianola Daniel , Cecchinato Alessio , Naya Hugo , Schön Chris-Carolin TITLE=Prediction of Complex Traits: Robust Alternatives to Best Linear Unbiased Prediction JOURNAL=Frontiers in Genetics VOLUME=9 YEAR=2018 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/genetics/articles/10.3389/fgene.2018.00195 DOI=10.3389/fgene.2018.00195 ISSN=1664-8021 ABSTRACT=
A widely used method for prediction of complex traits in animal and plant breeding is “genomic best linear unbiased prediction” (GBLUP). In a quantitative genetics setting, BLUP is a linear regression of phenotypes on a pedigree or on a genomic relationship matrix, depending on the type of input information available. Normality of the distributions of random effects and of model residuals is not required for BLUP but a Gaussian assumption is made implicitly. A potential downside is that Gaussian linear regressions are sensitive to outliers, genetic or environmental in origin. We present simple (relative to a fully Bayesian analysis) to implement robust alternatives to BLUP using a linear model with residual