Exploitation of genomic technologies for sustainable intensification of dairy goats

该项目通过使用新的基因和基因组技术来提高牛奶生产的效率和供应的连续性，解决了可持续强化奶山羊奶生产所面临的主要挑战。一个关键的制约因素是奶山羊无法在反季节自然繁殖，从而影响全年的牛奶供应。因此，这个项目将识别出容易在反季节繁殖的父亲和女儿，并产生对这一特征的基因组预测。通过该项目为英国山羊开发低密度(LD)、低成本的定制单核苷酸多态(SNP)阵列，将通过对这一关键性状和一系列其他关键性状的基因组预测，使英国和国外更广泛的商业山羊行业能够利用这种能力。这将促进从LD到更高密度的SNP阵列的归因，并允许更大比例的外群核进行基因分型，从而对更广泛的英国山羊种群和更广泛的群体产生更大的吸收和影响。该项目将确保奶山羊育种目标的平衡在长期内是可持续的，方法是将常规收集的构象评分和乳房炎记录作为动物健康和寿命的替代指标纳入基因组预测，从而帮助将这项研究和以前由TSB资助的研究转化为实践。

This project addresses key challenges facing the sustainable intensification of dairy goat milk production by using new genetic and genomic technologies to improve the efficiency of milk production and continuity of supply. A key constraint is the inability of dairy goats to naturally breed out of season, thereby affecting year-round supply of milk. This project therefore will identify sires with daughters that readily breed out of season and to generate genomic predictions of merit for this trait. The exploitation of such ability by the wider commercial goat industry in the UK and abroad will be enabled via genomic predictions for this and a range of other key traits via the development in this project of a low density (LD), lower cost customised single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) array for UK goats. This will facilitate the imputation from LD to the higher density SNP arrays and allow a greater proportion of the outer herd nucleus to be genotyped, thereby creating greater uptake and impact to the wider UK goat population and beyond. The project will ensure that the balance of breeding objectives for dairy goats is sustainable in the long-term, by including routine collection of conformation scoring and mastitis records as proxy indicators of animal health and longevity into the genomic predictions, thereby helping to translate this and previous TSB-funded research into practice