Investigating genotype by environment interaction for beef cattle fertility traits in commercial herds in northern Australia with multi-trait analysis.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Genotype by environment interactions (GxE) affect a range of production traits in beef cattle. Quantifying the effect of GxE in commercial and multi-breed herds is challenging due to unknown genetic linkage between animals across environment levels. The primary aim of this study was to use multi-trait models to investigate GxE for three heifer fertility traits, corpus luteum (CL) presence, first pregnancy and second pregnancy, in a large tropical beef multibreed dataset (n = 21,037). Environmental levels were defined by two different descriptors, burden of heat load (temperature humidity index, THI) and nutritional availability (based on mean average daily gain for the herd, ADWG). To separate the effects of genetic linkage and real GxE across the environments, 1000 repl

SUBMITTER: Copley JP 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11526658 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature