Genomic selection for heat tolerance in cattle
Event Details
- Date:
- Tuesday, 10 May 2016 - Tuesday, 10 May 2016
- Time:
- 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
- Room:
- Large Seminar Room 142 , level 3
- UQ Location:
- Queensland Bioscience Precinct (St Lucia)
- URL:
- https://www.vision6.com.au/em/mail/view.php?id=1152281&a=45549&k=372fb46
- Event category(s):
Event Contact
- Name:
- Mrs Luba Hickey
- Phone:
- 0416657907
- Email:
- l.kakoychenko@uq.edu.au
- Org. Unit:
- Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation
Event Description
- Full Description:
- QAAFI Science Seminar
Presented by Prof. Ben Hayes
Research Fellow at Centre for Nutrition & Food Sciences, Queensland Alliance for Agriculture & Food Innovation
Millions of people worldwide rely on dairy products as a key source of high value protein. However the increasing incidence of heat stress conditions threatens the security of this valuable food, as heat stress leads to reduced production and fertility. The identification of cattle that are genetically more tolerant of heat stress would be an important step in breeding herds better able to cope with the changing climate. This could be accelerated with genomic selection, using genome wide DNA markers that predict tolerance to heat stress. By integrating decade long daily weather station records, daily milk yields, and genotypes from 630,000 genome wide DNA markers in 10,000 cattle, we have derived genomic breeding values for heat tolerance.
We attempted to validate the genomic breeding values by selecting cows predicted to be heat tolerant from the DNA markers and cows predicted to be heat susceptible from the DNA markers and then taking them through a simulated mild heatwave event in climate control chambers. The predicted heat tolerant cows had a lower increase in rectal temperature over the 4 day heat challenge than predicted heat susceptible cows, and the predicted heat tolerant cows had less decline in production than predicted heat susceptible cows. These results demonstrate that by combining weather station data, yield data, and genomic information, progress can be made in breeding for heat tolerance.
Directions to UQ
- Google Map:
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- Directions:
- St Lucia Campus | Gatton campus.
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