ACTA VETERINARIA ET ZOOTECHNICA SINICA ›› 2017, Vol. 48 ›› Issue (10): 1843-1854.doi: 10.11843/j.issn.0366-6964.2017.10.007

Previous Articles     Next Articles

Genetic Parameter Estimation of Body Size and Weight of Adult Sanhe Cows

DONG Gang-hui1, ZHANG Xu1, WANG Ya-chun1*, WU Hong-jun2, LIU Ai-rong3, ZHANG Yi1, WANG Dong-sheng2, CUI Jiu-hui3, YUAN Peng2, JIANG Li-xin2, ZHOU Lei2, ZHAO Jian2   

  1. 1. College of Animal Science and Technology, China Agricultural University, Beijing 100193, China;
    2. Xieertala Breeding Farm in Inner Mongolia, Hailar 021000, China;
    3. Agriculture and Animal Husbandry Administration Bureau of Hailar in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Hailar 021000, China
  • Received:2017-01-23 Online:2017-10-23 Published:2017-10-23

Abstract:

This study was conducted to establish model for genetic analyses of adult body size and body weight in Sanhe cattle, and to estimate population genetic parameters, in order to provide foundational parameters for establishing breeding objective and forming selection index for Sanhe cattle. Body size and body weight data of 4 491 adult Sanhe cows were measured from 1997 to 2010, a total of 48 946 records were collected from Xiertala Cattle Farm of Inner Mongolia, where the nuclear herd for Sanhe cattle were located, and used for genetic analyses. The 15 body size and body weight traits included body height(BOH), body length (BL), chest girth (CG), cannon circumference(CC), body weight (BW), abdomen circumference (AC), back height(BAH), hip cross height(HCH), chest depth (CD), chest width (CW), hip width (HW), pin bone width (PBW), rump length (RL), head length (HL) and forehead width (FW). DMU package was used for genetic evaluation(AI-REML and EM algorithm) combined with multiple traits animal model, considering age of cow as fixed effect, farm-year-season and additive genetic effect as random effects. Heritabilities and genetic correlations were computed based on estimated variance components, and genetic trends of all traits were analyzed based on estimated breeding values. The results showed that the estimated heritabilities of BOH, BL, CG, CC, BW, AC, BAH, HCH, CD, CW, HW, PBW, RL, HL and FW in adult cows were 0.73±0.02, 0.58±0.02, 0.43±0.03, 0.51±0.02, 0.41±0.03, 0.51±0.03, 0.60±0.03, 0.69±0.03, 0.55±0.03, 0.26±0.02, 0.28±0.03, 0.17±0.02, 0.21±0.02, 0.69±0.03 and 0.55±0.03, respectively. The genetic correlation coefficient among body size and weight traits for adult cows were from-0.19 to 0.92, and their phenotypic correlation coefficient were from-0.30 to 0.93. The genetic correlation coefficient among BOH, BAH and HCH were 0.79-0.88, and their phenotypic correlation coefficient were 0.76-0.93. Genetic correlation among HW, PBW and RL were low (0.11-0.34), and their phenotypic correlation were medium (0.50-0.83). The heritabilities of body size and body weight in adult Sanhe cows are medium to high inheritable traits in general. In which, low genetic correlation exists among traits related to reproduction performance, while higher genetic correlation exists among traits related to body structure. It is suggested that selection system for Sanhe cattle should be strengthened, so that genetic level of economically important traits could be improved steadily.

CLC Number: