Genome Wide Association Study for Heifer Pregnancy in Nellore Cattle

Considering the economic importance of sexual precocity in Brazilian beef cattle production systems, we were interested in a genome wide association study (GWAS) to find genomic regions that might explain the genetic variability of precocity assessed from heifer pregnancy rates. Given each suggestive region of large effect, we were interested in contrasting the two paternally-inherited haplotype alleles to identify sires that were heterozygous for the effect caused by that region. The database consists of reproductive information on 1,337 Bos indicus Nellore heifers, from three different herds in Brazil. GWAS results identified genomic regions on chromosomes 5, 14 and 18 that explained more than 1% of the total genetic variance. Haplotype analysis for the chromosome 5 region showed heterozygote sires with significant differences in reproduction between their half-sib progenies