Abstract
Bovine and buffalo are important livestock species that have contributed to human lives for more than 1000 years. Improving fertility is very important to reduce the cost of production. In the current review, we classified reproductive traits into three categories: ovulation, breeding, and calving related traits. We systematically summarized the heritability estimates, molecular markers, and genomic selection (GS) for reproductive traits of bovine and buffalo. This review aimed to compile the heritability and genome-wide association studies (GWASs) related to reproductive traits in both bovine and buffalos and tried to highlight the possible disciplines which should benefit buffalo breeding. The estimates of heritability of reproductive traits ranged were from 0 to 0.57 and there were wide differences between the populations. For some specific traits, such as age of puberty (AOP) and calving difficulty (CD), the majority beef population presents relatively higher heritability than dairy cattle. Compared to bovine, genetic studies for buffalo reproductive traits are limited for age at first calving and calving interval traits. Several quantitative trait loci (QTLs), candidate genes, and SNPs associated with bovine reproductive traits were screened and identified by candidate gene methods and/or GWASs. The IGF1 and LEP pathways in addition to non-coding RNAs are highlighted due to their crucial relevance with reproductive traits. The distribution of QTLs related to various traits showed a great differences. Few GWAS have been performed so far on buffalo age at first calving, calving interval, and days open traits. In addition, we summarized the GS studies on bovine and buffalo reproductive traits and compared the accuracy between different reports. Taken together, GWAS and candidate gene approaches can help to understand the molecular genetic mechanisms of complex traits. Recently, GS has been used extensively and can be performed on multiple traits to improve the accuracy of prediction even for traits with low heritability, and can be combined with multi-omics for further analysis.
Highlights
Reproductive traits are economically important for sustainable food production, especially for monotocous livestock, such as cattle and buffalo
Several countries have included female reproductive traits in the breeding goals to emphasize the genetic aspects of reducing fertility costs (FCOST) in dairy cattle (Kadarmideen and Simm, 2002)
We emphasize the recent literature about genetic parameters, genome-wide association study (GWAS), and genomic selection (GS) for reproductive traits in cattle and buffalo over the past 20 years for researchers, who can integrate these traits in cattle and buffalo breeding programs and achieve optimum fertility
Summary
Reproductive traits are economically important for sustainable food production, especially for monotocous livestock, such as cattle and buffalo. Over the past 20 years, several studies were conducted to estimate the heritability of different reproductive traits in dairy cattle (Table 2), beef cattle (Table 3), and buffalo cows (Table 4). All ovulation-related traits range from low to moderate heritabilities (Table 2).
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