Abstract
Background: Economically important milk production traits including milk volume, milk fat and protein yield vary considerably across dairy goats in New Zealand. A significant portion of the variation is attributable to genetic variation. Discovery of genetic markers linked to milk production traits can be utilised to drive selection of high-performance animals.A previously reported genome wide association study across dairy goats in New Zealand identified a quantitative trait loci (QTL) located on chromosome 19. The most significantly associated single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) marker for this locus is located at position 26,610,610 (SNP marker 19:26,610,610). This locus is associated with multiple milk production traits including fat, protein and volume. The predicted effect of selection for the beneficial haplotype would result in an average production increase of 2.2kg fat, 1.9kg protein and 73.6kg volume.An outstanding question was whether selection for the beneficial allele would co-select for any negative pleiotropic effects. An adverse relationship between milk production and udder health traits has been reported at this locus. Therefore, a genome wide association study was undertaken looking for loci associated with udder traitsResults: The QTL and production associated marker 19:26,610,610 was identified in this study to also be associated with several goat udder traits including udder depth (UD), fore udder attachment (FUA) and rear udder attachment (RUA). Our study replicates the negative relationship between production and udder traits with the high production allele at position 19:26,610,610 associated with an adverse change in UD, FUA and RUAConclusions: Our study has confirmed this negative relationship between udder traits and production traits in the NZ goat population. We have found that the frequency of the high production allele is relatively high in the NZ goat population, indicating that its effect on udder conformation is not significantly detrimental on animal health. It will however be important to monitor udder conformation as the Chromosome 19 locus is progressively implemented for marker assisted selection. It will also be of interest to determine if the gene underlying the production QTL has a direct effect on mammary gland morphology or whether the changes observed are a consequence of the increased milk volume.
Single-step genomic evaluation of milk production traits in Canadian Alpine and Saanen dairy goats
