Abstract
The buffalo was domesticated around 3000-6000 years ago and has substantial economic significance as a meat, dairy, and draught animal. The buffalo has remained underutilized in terms of the development of a well-annotated and assembled reference genome de novo. It is mandatory to explore the genetic architecture of a species to understand the biology that helps to manage its genetic variability, which is ultimately used for selective breeding and genomic selection. Morphological and molecular data have revealed that the swamp buffalo population has strong geographical genomic diversity with low gene flow but strong phenotypic consistency, while the river buffalo population has higher phenotypic diversity with a weak phylogeographic structure. The availability of recent high-quality reference genome and genotyping marker panels has invigorated many genome-based studies on evolutionary history, genetic diversity, functional elements, and performance traits. The increasing molecular knowledge syndicate with selective breeding should pave the way for genetic improvement in the climatic resilience, disease resistance, and production performance of water buffalo populations globally.
Highlights
The present review focuses on providing comprehensive insight into the available genomic resources and genome re-sequencing efforts related to buffaloes aimed to better understand buffalo physiology, which would help to optimize reproduction efficiency, production potentials, nutritional value, and product quality
In the agouti signaling protein (ASIP) gene, Liang et al [124] reported in long interspersed nuclear elements (LINEs)-1 a 2809-bp-long insertion, which is the reason for the white coat pigmentation in swamp buffaloes
A substitution C > A in exon 27 of the C3 gene was traced in the buffalo population that is significantly associated with the somatic cell score, which is a potential indicator of mastitis in dairy animals [129]
Summary
The buffalo is an even-toed hoofed animal of the Bovidae family, genus Bubalus, and tribe Bovini. The wild buffalo has two major types: the Asian buffalo (Bubalus bubalus) and the African buffalo (Syncerus caffer) [15]. The African buffalo is of two types: Syncerus caffer nanus (2n = 54) and Syncerus caffer caffer (2n = 52) [16], whereas Bubalus bubalis carabanesis, with karyotype 2n = 48, and Bubalus bubalis bubalis (2n = 50) are two types of Asiatic buffalo (Bubalus bubalis). It is assumed that the domesticated water buffalo (Bubalus bubalis) originated from the wild buffalo (Bos arnee) that was found in the northeastern region of India [15]
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