Abstract
Baladi, (B taurus; DAGRIS) a native cattle breed found throughout the entire Southern Mediterranean basin, is known for its high disease resistance and hardiness. Baladi cows in Israel and Southern Mediterranean basin are endangered due to the introduction of larger and more productive European breeds in these regions. In order to promote conservation initiatives of Baladi by stakeholders, the yet unexplored production traits, over their well accepted adaptation to the harsh Mediterranean conditions, were sought in the current study. Aiming at locating the genetic potential of Baladi for meat quality, the allelic and genotypic frequencies of four polymorphisms in CAST, CAPN1, DGAT1, and FASN genes, previously reported to be associated with meat quality traits, were compared to four cattle breeds. The other four breeds included Limousine, Holstein, Simmental and Brahman cattle, which represent beef, dairy, dual-purpose and indicine bovine members, respectively. Relative to the four bovine members, Baladi cattle exhibited high frequencies of the increasing alleles and genotypes in all four SNPs associated with meat tenderness or fat deposition. These findings, along with future phenotyping and genomic profiling of meat quality related markers, and the well-established adaptability to the challenging Mediterranean pasture conditions, may promote conservation initiatives of Baladi cattle by stakeholders.
Highlights
The search for new food sources has promoted, along the years, a global spread of well-marketed breeds [1]
While in BAL and SIM there was a mix of both genders, BRH was exclusively represented by females, and LIM and HOL by males
Significant differences were found between genotypic frequencies in the CAST single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) (P≤0.01), showing predominance of the heterozygous genotype AG in females (Table 3)
Summary
The search for new food sources has promoted, along the years, a global spread of well-marketed breeds [1]. The current domesticated animal dispersion is essentially restricted to a few breeds, and almost exclusively involves transfers from developed to developing countries, thereby imposing a major threat to the conservation and utilization of indigenous animal genetic resource [2]. The need to conserve livestock genetic diversity within breeds has been recognized already in the early 1990s [3], and is widely reflected by FAO initiatives [2]. While basic conservation programs focus on managing production performance through the control of population size and genetic variability, to ensure maintenance of adaptability to a given environment in favor of persistent production under non-favorable conditions, less attention has been directed to product quality [4]. Comparing to a larger frame breeds, the small-framed BAL cows were found to travel longer distances between foraging habitats and
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