132 OVERVIEW OF FERTILITY TRAITS IN RUSSIAN HOLSTEIN BULLS USING GENOME-WIDE ASSOCIATION
A. A. Sermyagin A , E. N. Naryshkina A , E. A. Gladyr A , I. N. Yanchukov A , G. Brem A B and N. A. Zinovieva AA L.K. Ernst Institute of Animal Husbandry, Moscow, Russia;
B Institute of Animal Breeding and Genetics, University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna, Austria
Reproduction, Fertility and Development 29(1) 174-174 https://doi.org/10.1071/RDv29n1Ab132
Published: 2 December 2016
Abstract
Holsteins are the most widely distributed cattle breed in Russia. To achieve improvement of both milk production and fertility traits, principles were elaborated to use genomic approaches together with breeding strategies to develop a common breeding index. Combining semen-quality measures for sires with the cows’ reproduction records makes it possible to resolve the problems with decreased conception rates and semen production. Our objective was to search the genomic regions and associated markers for bulls’ fertility traits in Russian Holstein cattle. For the first step, 282 bulls were genotyped using the Bovine SNP50 BeadChip (Illumina Inc., San Diego, CA, USA). The data set originated from the Moscow AI station including records for semen volume (SV), sperm concentration (SC), average SV for multiple ejaculates collected from one sire (ASV), motility (Mt), and number of spermatozoa (NS). The data set consisted of 14,490 records, which varied between 10 and 328 per animal, with 104 sires in the data set. The average age of sires was 80.1 ± 0.3 months. For sires with own records, the deregressed estimated breeding values were calculated using BLUP AM, whereas for the sires without records direct genomic values (DGV) were calculated through GBLUP. The DGV values were used as the animal’s pseudo-phenotypes for a common data set. After quality check in Plink 1.07, 41,435 SNP were taken. Bonferroni correction test for detection of significant associations was applied as P < 1.21 × 10−6. The values for the heritability were 0.322, 0.202, 0.366, 0.014, and 0.169 for SV, SC, ASV, Mt, and NS, respectively. The SNP with a direct significant effect on SV and ASV were identified: ARS-BFGL-NGS-100206 (P = 1.5 × 10−7), BTA-89872-no-rs (P = 6.0 × 10−8), ARS-BFGL-NGS-33119 (P = 2.7 × 10−7), Hapmap26947-BTA-133787 (P = 5.0 × 10−7), BTA-30092-no-rs (P = 9.8 × 10−7), ARS-BFGL-BAC-6515 (P = 1.0 × 10−7), and BTB-01625220 (P = 4.2 × 10−8). For SC and NS traits, the polymorphisms ARS-BFGL-NGS-57433 (P = 7.4 × 10−7) and ARS-BFGL-NGS-12662 (P = 5.1 × 10−7) were found. Two QTL for Mt including 11 SNP were detected on BTA1 (146.3–146.9 Mb) and BTA9 (76.9–77.1 Mb). The DGV effect of SNP (R2) ranged from 8.0 to 10.4% of additive genetic variance. The genes SOX5 (BTA12), PERP (BTA9), and EPT1 (BTA11) were associated with embryonic development, cell death, or apoptosis and synthesis of selenoproteins. Our results may be used to select donor cows for oocytes or embryo collection in the focus of genomic selection.
Supported by the Federal Agency for Scientific Organizations #0600–2014–0007.6 and by the Russian Ministry of Education and Science #RFMEFI60414X0062.
