No abstract

SUMMARYThe fertility of young bulls impacts on reproduction rates, farm profit and the rate of genetic progress in beef herds. Cattle researchers and industry therefore routinely collect data on the reproductive performance of bulls. Genome-wide association studies were carried out to identify genomic regions and genes associated with reproductive traits measured during the pubertal development of Tropical Composite bulls, from 4 to 24 months of age. Data from 1 085 bulls were collected for seven traits: blood hormone levels of inhibin at 4 months (IN), luteinizing hormone following a gonadotropin releasing hormone challenge at 4 months (LH), insulin-like growth factor 1 at 6 months (IGF1), scrotal circumference at 12 months (SC), sperm motility at 18 months (MOT), percentage of normal spermatozoa at 24 months (PNS) and age at a scrotal circumference of 26 cm (AGE26, or pubertal age). Data from 729 068 single-nucleotide polymorphisms were used in the association analysis. Significant polymorphism associations were discovered for IN, IGF1, SC, AGE26 and PNS. Based on these associations, INHBE, INHBC and HELB are proposed as candidate genes for IN regulation. Polymorphisms associated with IGF1 mapped to the PLAG1 gene region, validating a reported quantitative trait locus on chromosome 14 for IGF1. The X chromosome contained most of the significant associations found for SC, AGE26 and PNS. These findings will contribute to the identification of diagnostic genetic markers and informed genomic selection strategies to assist breeding of cattle with improved fertility. Furthermore, this work provides evidence contributing to gene function annotation in the context of male fertility.

Linkage disequilibrium (LD) and the persistence of its phase across populations are important for genomic selection as well as fine scale mapping of quantitative trait loci (QTL). However, knowledge of LD in beef cattle, as well as the persistence of LD phase between crossbreds (C) and purebreds, is limited. The objective of this study was to understand the patterns of LD in Angus (AN), Charolais (CH), and C beef cattle based on 31,073, 32,088, and 33,286 SNP in each population, respectively. Amount of LD decreased rapidly from 0.29 to 0.23 to 0.19 in AN, 0.22 to 0.16 to 0.12 in CH, 0.21 to 0.15 to 0.11 in C, when the distance range between markers changed from 0–30 kb to 30–70 kb and then to 70–100 kb, respectively. Breeds and chromosomes had significant effects (P < 0.001) on LD decay. There was significant interaction between breeds and chromosomes (P < 0.001). Correlations of LD phase were high between C and AN (0.84), C and CH (0.81), as well as between AN and CH (0.77) for distances less than or equal to 70 kb. These dropped when the distance increased. Estimated effective population sizes for AN and CH were 207 and 285, respectively, for 10 generations ago. Given a useful LD of at least 0.3 between pairs of SNPs, the LD phase between any pair of the three breed groups was highly persistent. The current SNP density would allow the capture of approximately 49% of useful LD between SNP and marker QTL in AN, and 38% in CH. A higher density SNP panel or redesign of the current panel is needed to achieve more of useful LD for the purpose of genomic selection beef cattle.