The above picture was taken at the Olympic National Park in Washington State. The forest is managed to balance environment preservation and harvest for human supplies. The bottom picture was taken in front of Moscow Mountain in Idaho State. The forest area has been continually reduced for cultivation profits. Intentional burning is visible at far left. A common question is how to breed profitable trees to sustain our mother nature. This question can be asked in every corner of the world. Answering such question is all about this Workshop of Genomic Prediction, hosted by RIF-CAF (Research Institute of Forestry Chinese Academy of Forestry).

Thanks to the technologies of DNA markers, genomic prediction can be a game changer to improve breeding efficiency, especially for trees. Genomic prediction is commonly known as genomic selection, popularized by the 2001 Genetics paper demonstrating the advantages of using all markers with Bayesian approaches over a few statisticaly significant ones as Marker Assisted Selection (MAS). In fact, a similar approach was already invented in 1994 using genomic BLUP (gBLUP) to directly and efficiently predict breeding values for maize lines. The gBLUP method did not receive attention deserved until the gBLUP reinvention in 2007 and its application in dairy cattle in 2008. Since then, both the gBLUP and Bayesian approaches have been extended to long alphabet lists, including Single Step BLUP, Trait Specific BLUP, SUPER BLUP, Compress BLUP, Bayes A, B, Cpi, etc. Recently, attentions have been paid to integrate MAS into genomic prediction, opening a new avenue to enhance prediction accuracy.

This workshop is a miniature (five days) of the second half of a semester-long graduate student course offered at Washington State University: Statistical Genomics. The first half (GWAS) will be briefed to facilitate the integration of MAS into genomic prediction. An exam (40% score) will be given at the end of the workshop, and a final project (60%), either Option A, Option B, or both, is due two months after. Certificates will be awarded to the participants with scores of 60% or above. Eighty participants are invited to attend the workshop onsite. Many more participants will attend online through Tencent Meeting with capability of one thousand people. All participants are free of charge. Host RIF-CAF is truely appreciated for public goods.