Context:In beef cattle populations, there is little evidence regarding the minimum number of genetic markers needed to obtain reliable genomic prediction and imputed genotypes. Aims:This study aimed to evaluate the impact of single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) marker density and minor allele frequency (MAF), on genomic predictions and imputation performance for high and low heritability traits using the single-step genomic Best Linear Unbiased Prediction methodology (ssGBLUP) in a simulated beef cattle population. © 2023 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing