487. Bull effects on in vitro embryo production quality traits are repeatable and heritable

Abstract

In this study, in vitro production of embryos (IVP) was performed using oocytes aspirated from slaughterhouse ovaries and fertilized with ejaculates from 123 bulls aged between 10-and 92 months at semen collection. The restricted maximum likelihood approach was used to estimate genetic parameters for embryo production quality traits including blastocyst rate, hatch rate and an index trait combining Blastocyst rate, Kinetic Score, and Morphology score (BLxMxK). A total of 259 records were available for analysis. The results indicate that bulls at a younger age had better performances in all the studied IVP traits compared to bulls at later ages. The results also show low to high heritability and moderate to high repeatability for the IVP traits, suggesting the possibility of implementing selective breeding of bulls for better IVP performance.