Climate-Resilient Dairy Cattle Production: Applications of Genomic Tools and Statistical Models.

Mullakkalparambil Velayudhan Silpa,Pradeep Kumar Malik,Veerasamy Sejian,Raghavendra Bhatta,Mini Ravi Reshma Nair,Sven König,Vinicius F C Fonseca,Alex Sandro Campos Maia

doi:10.3389/fvets.2021.625189

Abstract

The current changing climate trend poses a threat to the productive efficacy and welfare of livestock across the globe. This review is an attempt to synthesize information pertaining to the applications of various genomic tools and statistical models that are available to identify climate-resilient dairy cows. The different functional and economical traits which govern milk production play a significant role in determining the cost of milk production. Thus, identification of these traits may revolutionize the breeding programs to develop climate-resilient dairy cattle. Moreover, the genotype–environment interaction also influences the performance of dairy cattle especially during a challenging situation. The recent advancement in molecular biology has led to the development of a few biotechnological tools and statistical models like next-generation sequencing (NGS), microarray technology, whole transcriptome analysis, and genome-wide association studies (GWAS) which can be used to quantify the molecular mechanisms which govern the climate resilience capacity of dairy cows. Among these, the most preferred option for researchers around the globe was GWAS as this approach jointly takes into account all the genotype, phenotype, and pedigree information of farm animals. Furthermore, selection signatures can also help to demarcate functionally important regions in the genome which can be used to detect potential loci and candidate genes that have undergone positive selection in complex milk production traits of dairy cattle. These identified biomarkers can be incorporated in the existing breeding policies using genomic selection to develop climate-resilient dairy cattle.

Highlights

With the growing global human population, a huge demand for livestock products can be expected in the coming years [1]
In the study conducted by Cheruiyot et al [45], the G × E for heat tolerance was evaluated for milk production traits in Australian Holsteins using the test-day milk yield records of cows and sires that had their progeny in different climatic regions
This review has projected the information pertaining to the impacts of heat stress on milk production of dairy cows and the various genomic tools that are available to identify climate-resilient dairy cows

Summary

Introduction

With the growing global human population, a huge demand for livestock products can be expected in the coming years [1]. In the study conducted by Cheruiyot et al [45], the G × E for heat tolerance was evaluated for milk production traits in Australian Holsteins using the test-day milk yield records of cows and sires that had their progeny in different climatic regions. The animal model and statistical method based on the REML were used to establish the genetic correlation between the hair coat traits and milk yield in Brazilian Holstein cattle population [43, 44, 51].

Results

Conclusion