Genetic Improvement of Tharparkar Cattle: A Review

Tharparkar cattle are an important dual breed of desert which can be improved for sustainable milk production by using different molecular markers and through selective breeding. Although, genetic studies done on Tharparkar, are fewer, there is need of more attention on genetic studies and identification of useful markers and SNPs associated with production traits. This review article describes the production and reproduction performance of the breed and emphasizes more on genetic studies, breed characterization, marker assisted selection or identification of molecular markers, genomic assessment, etc. to improve the breed status. Molecular markers for heat tolerance, disease resistance, high fat and protein production, A2 milk composition identified in Tharparkar cattle positively encourage breeders to improve the breed for future use. It may help the government agencies to undertake systematic animal husbandry practices and breed improvement programmes so that high quality germ plasm may be provided to the farmers for breed improvement in rural area.

​Enhancement of Production Performance of Tharparkar Cattle using Lactation Persistency as A Selection Tool

Background: Lactation persistency of cattle is the ability to maintain constant milk production after the peak milk yield. This work was conducted using a total of 372 daily milk yield records of all parities of 190 Tharparkar cattle sired by 38 bulls from 1990 to 2019 (29 years), collected from Animal Genetics and Breeding Division, maintained in Livestock Research centre of NDRI, Karnal. Methods: The lactation persistency was estimated using Mahadevan’s method (1951) based on the ratio of milk production in first 28 weeks to milk production in 10 weeks. Standard error as percentage of mean was used to test the efficiency of persistency indices. To study the effect of non-genetic factors Least-squares analysis was carried out by Harvey (1990) model. Result: The least squares mean of total milk yield (TMY), lactation length (LL), peak yield (PY), days to attain peak yield (DAPY) and lactation persistency (LP) were 1633.40±45.79Kg, 272.55±4.64 days, 10.83±0.17kg, 41.48±2.34 days and 1.27±0.02 respectively. First calvers had highest LL, DAPY and persistency. Rainy calvers had more TMY, LL, DAPY and LP and winter calvers were the low performers. Correlation of persistency with TMY, LL and DAPY were highly significant and positive. There was negative correlation with PY and LP. The estimated heritability for TMY, LL and PY was 0.16±0.34, 0.49±0.38 and 0.84±0.41 respectively. The heritability estimate of lactation persistency was very low with high standard error which revealed the significance of environmental effect in persistency.

Systems Biology under heat stress in Indian Cattle

Transcriptome profiling of Vrindavani and Tharparkar cattle revealed that more numbers of genes dysregulated in Vrindavani than in Tharparkar. A contrast in gene expression was observed with 18.5 % of upregulated genes in Vrindavani were downregulated in Tharparkar and 17.5% upregulated genes in Tharparkar were downregulated in Vrindavani. Functional annotation of genes differentially expressed in Tharparkar and Vrindavani revealed that the systems biology in Tharparkar is moving towards counteracting the effects due to heat stress. Unlike Vrindavani, Tharparkar is not only endowed with higher expression of the scavengers (UBE2G1, UBE2S, and UBE2H) of misfolded proteins but also with protectors (VCP, Serp1, and CALR) of naïve unfolded proteins. Further, higher expression of the antioxidants in Tharparkar enables it to cope up with higher levels of free radicals generated as a result of heat stress. In this study we found relevant genes dysregulated in Tharparkar in the direction that can counter heat stress.