Longevity and reproductive traits in Angus cattle: Genetic parameters, predicted and realized genetic change

Larracharte, Andrea; Espasandin, A. C.; Urioste, J. I.

doi:10.1016/j.livsci.2021.104604

Cited by 3 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…The correlation estimated between EBV for DC and B0 of the STAY ranged between −0.08 and −0.27 for Nelore and Hereford/Braford, respectively. For the Angus breed, Larracharte et al (2021) reported lower estimates than those found in this study, corroborating the hypothesis that DC has little influence on the stayability of the Angus breed.…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 90%

Genetic associations between stayability to consecutive calvings and traits of economic interest in taurine and zebu breeds

da Silva Morales,

Silva,

Ayres

et al. 2023

J Animal Breeding Genetics

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Stayability (STAY) is a way to evaluate the productive longevity of females. Measuring the STAY at each cow calving allows earlier indicators of longevity to be obtained. Our objective with this study was to verify the association between STAY and consecutive calvings and traits potentially used as selection criteria in beef cattle, such as age at first calving (AFC), days to calving (DC), weaning weight (WW), and yearling weight (YW). Data from the Nelore, Angus/Brangus, and Hereford/Braford breeds were used. The estimation of variance components and subsequent prediction of breeding values were performed for all traits. The estimated breeding values (EBV) were used to analyse the association between STAY and the other traits. The Pearson's correlation estimated between the EBV for the intercept coefficient for STAY to consecutive calvings and those of AFC, DC, WW (direct and maternal effects), and YW was favourable and of low magnitude (<0.25) depending on the breed studied. The influence of the genetic merit of AFC on the chance of selection for STAY was favourable and relevant regardless of the intensity of selection and breed. DC and WW (maternal effect) traits were favourably influenced by the chance of selection for STAY, irrespective of breed. The WW (direct effect) did not affect the chance of selection for STAY for the Nelore and Hereford/Braford breeds and negatively influenced, but to a small extent, the Angus/Brangus breed. For YW, an increase in genetic merit affected the chances of selection for STAY, depending on the breed and selection intensity evaluated. The influence of the genetic merit for AFC, DC, and WW (maternal effect) on the chance of selection for STAY to consecutive calvings was favourable and relevant regardless of the selection intensity scenario evaluated. The WW (direct effect) did not influence the chance of selection for STAY. For the scenario with high selection intensity, the selection for YW favourably influenced the chance of selection for STAY in Angus/Brangus and Hereford/Braford breeds but not in Nelore.

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Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 90%

Genetic associations between stayability to consecutive calvings and traits of economic interest in taurine and zebu breeds

da Silva Morales,

Silva,

Ayres

et al. 2023

J Animal Breeding Genetics

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“…In the only other report for genetic trend for longevity in beef cattle, Larracharte et al. (2021) found the breeding value for length of productive life increased by 0.0004 days/year for Uruguayan Angus. These estimates of genetic trend may be ramifications of both the heritability of longevity and the lack of any meaningful selection differential having been achieved in a genetic improvement program, despite longevity being an economically relevant trait.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…In studies of human beings, where reproductive failure is also not a confounding factor in recording the relevant phenotype, longevity has been estimated to be between 12% and 30% heritable (Kaplanis et al., 2018; van den Berg et al., 2019). Lower estimates of the heritability for length of productive life or longevity are more frequently reported in studies where culling for reproductive failure was more commonplace: 0.08 (Larracharte et al., 2021), 0.11 (Mészáros, Kadlečík, et al., 2013), 0.05 (MacNeil & Vukasinovic, 2011), 0.14 (Rogers et al., 2004) and 0.037 (Brzáková et al., 2019). Price and Schluter (1991) postulated that the low heritability of life‐history traits, including longevity, resulted from them being subjected to greater environmental variation than metric traits with higher heritability rather than a lack of additive genetic variance.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Longevity in South African Afrikaner cows as assessed through survival analysis

Bot Steffl,

MacNeil,

Scholtz

et al. 2024

J Animal Breeding Genetics

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The Afrikaner breed of cattle is indigenous to South Africa and, due to their hardiness, was once the most popular breed amongst South African farmers, although in recent years their numbers have decreased. The goal of this study was to assess factors affecting length of productive life, defined as the interval between production of the first and last calf, in Afrikaner cattle using survival analysis. The data spanned 40 years with an observed measure of length of life for 29,379 cows from 374 herds. Relative to similar analyses, few (n = 2964; 8.4%) cows had records that were right censored. The median length of productive life of an Afrikaner cow was just less than 6 years. Cows that were younger at their first parturition had longer productive lives than those that were older at their first calving. Cows that were born in the period from December to February had shorter productive lives than those born between March and November. The estimated animal genetic variance of 0.266 resulted in a heritability estimate for length of productive life in Afrikaner cattle of 0.225. Thus, there appeared to be sufficient additive genetic variance in Afrikaner cattle to enable genetic improvement in their length of productive life.

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“…Maintaining a high pregnancy rate is critical because problems associated with this trait are the leading cause of culling in the beef industry [86]. Although fertility traits are pivotal in the beef and dairy industry [20,[87][88][89], they are notorious for their low heritability, making it hard to make genetic progress [86,90].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Genomics of heifer pregnancy, days open, and days to conception in Red Angus heifers

Tuyishimire¹

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Although it is challenging to collect information on reproductive traits, fertility traits are believed to play a significant role in the growth of the beef industry and bring revenue to the producers. It has been challenging to make genetic improvement of fertility traits because of scarce records and their low heritability. The joint analyses of economic and indicator traits provided much information for the analysis of other production traits, resulting in favorable improvement. The same method can be applied to reproductive traits to increase prediction accuracy. Furthermore, the ubiquity of high-throughput genotypes and the development of advanced computational methods give hope that there is a possibility of determining the genetic influence on fertility traits. The advancement in phenotypic collection technology eases the keeping of records on both economic and indicator fertility traits. Also, it allows the development of new traits to be analyzed while reducing the cost of data availability. Heifer Pregnancy (HP) - the ability for a heifer to conceive by the end of the breeding season; Days Open (DO) - days of breeding season a heifer remained open; and Days to Conception (DC) -- the number of days it took for a heifer to get pregnant, are easy to measure fertility traits with enough information to make beef reproductive genetic improvement in the industry. The objective of the current study is to identify DNA markers tagging genes influencing HP, DC, and DC among 18,039 Red Angus heifers, find the genetic relationship among those traits, and creating the genomic predictions of days to conception and days open. The results show a small heritability of 0.119 to 0.131, 0.10 to 0.102, and 0.0749 to 0.112 for HP, DO, and DC, respectively. The DC model resulted in higher accuracy than other models. There was a high correlation between HP and DO (r = - 0.61 and 0.85 from the linear model and the liability scale model, respectively). The de-regressed estimated breeding value (EBV) genomewide association (GWAS) yielded 58 and 2 significant SNPs at suggestive significant level (pvalue [less than] 1.0e-05) for HP and DC, respectively. This study found GRID2 and ZMIZ1 genes to be associated with heifer pregnancy, and it has been speculated that the central nervous system related genes ontology and the hormones it controls might suggest the physiology behind some of the reproductive differences. The present study confirms the low heritability status of fertility traits and shows the possibilities of genetic enhancement based on the obtained accuracies. The identified genes and gene terms will serve as starting points for future studies that might focus on different phenotypes while reducing the cost of phenotyping and improving the accuracy of fertility traits genomic predictions.

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Longevity and reproductive traits in Angus cattle: Genetic parameters, predicted and realized genetic change

Cited by 3 publications

References 26 publications

Genetic associations between stayability to consecutive calvings and traits of economic interest in taurine and zebu breeds

Genetic associations between stayability to consecutive calvings and traits of economic interest in taurine and zebu breeds

Longevity in South African Afrikaner cows as assessed through survival analysis

Genomics of heifer pregnancy, days open, and days to conception in Red Angus heifers

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