Abstract
BackgroundMeat quality involves many traits, such as marbling, tenderness, juiciness, and backfat thickness, all of which require attention from livestock producers. Backfat thickness improvement by means of traditional selection techniques in Canchim beef cattle has been challenging due to its low heritability, and it is measured late in an animal’s life. Therefore, the implementation of new methodologies for identification of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) linked to backfat thickness are an important strategy for genetic improvement of carcass and meat quality.ResultsThe set of SNPs identified by the random forest approach explained as much as 50% of the deregressed estimated breeding value (dEBV) variance associated with backfat thickness, and a small set of 5 SNPs were able to explain 34% of the dEBV for backfat thickness. Several quantitative trait loci (QTL) for fat-related traits were found in the surrounding areas of the SNPs, as well as many genes with roles in lipid metabolism.ConclusionsThese results provided a better understanding of the backfat deposition and regulation pathways, and can be considered a starting point for future implementation of a genomic selection program for backfat thickness in Canchim beef cattle.
Highlights
Meat quality involves many traits, such as marbling, tenderness, juiciness, and backfat thickness, all of which require attention from livestock producers
Considering all of the above, the objectives of this study were to identify single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with backfat thickness in Canchim beef cattle using the random forest approach for genome-wide association studies, to shed insight on potential genes associated with this trait, and to discover potential SNPs for future implementation of genomic selection (GS)
We performed regression analysis for both strategies (Common SNP and Highest 1% SNP), and the results were very similar in the final number of SNPs selected, and the percentages of deregressed estimated breeding value (dEBV) variance explained by the final set of SNPs (Table 1) enabling the discussion to be focused on the set of 21 SNPs selected from the Highest 1% SNP strategy due to its higher % of dEBV variance explained
Summary
Meat quality involves many traits, such as marbling, tenderness, juiciness, and backfat thickness, all of which require attention from livestock producers. The Canchim breed has fared well when raised on natural pastures in Brazil, some carcass traits have still remained inferior when compared to Bos taurus One such trait is backfat thickness, which has been a concern for Canchim producers, and for the beef cattle industry in general, due to its low fat deposition in animals raised on pasture (1.90mm ± 0.77) [14]. Improvement of this trait in Canchim beef cattle using traditional selection techniques has had limited success because of its relatively low heritability (0.23) [14], and because it is measured late in an animal’s life. Most studies available in the literature regarding backfat thickness have been conducted on animals raised in feedlot systems, which permits earlier ultrasound measurements, and has shown moderate to high heritabilities [15,16,17,18,19], thereby allowing traditional selection techniques under these conditions to be more successful than compared to the Canchim breed
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