Dataset Information

A Strategy To Exploit Surrogate Sire Technology in Livestock Breeding Programs.

ABSTRACT: In this work, we performed simulations to develop and test a strategy for exploiting surrogate sire technology in animal breeding programs. Surrogate sire technology allows the creation of males that lack their own germline cells, but have transplanted spermatogonial stem cells from donor males. With this technology, a single elite male donor could give rise to huge numbers of progeny, potentially as much as all the production animals in a particular time period. One hundred replicates of various scenarios were performed. Scenarios followed a common overall structure but differed in the strategy used to identify elite donors and how these donors were used in the product development part. The results of this study showed that using surrogate sire technology would significantly increase the genetic merit of commercial sires, by as much as 6.5 to 9.2 years' worth of genetic gain compared to a conventional breeding program. The simulations suggested that a strategy involving three stages (an initial genomic test followed by two subsequent progeny tests) was the most effective of all the strategies tested. The use of one or a handful of elite donors to generate the production animals would be very different to current practice. While the results demonstrate the great potential of surrogate sire technology there are considerable risks but also other opportunities. Practical implementation of surrogate sire technology would need to account for these.

SUBMITTER: Gottardo P

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6325890 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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A Strategy To Exploit Surrogate Sire Technology in Livestock Breeding Programs.

Gottardo Paolo P Gorjanc Gregor G Battagin Mara M Gaynor R Chris RC Jenko Janez J Ros-Freixedes Roger R Bruce A Whitelaw C C Mileham Alan J AJ Herring William O WO Hickey John M JM

G3 (Bethesda, Md.) 20190109 1

In this work, we performed simulations to develop and test a strategy for exploiting surrogate sire technology in animal breeding programs. Surrogate sire technology allows the creation of males that lack their own germline cells, but have transplanted spermatogonial stem cells from donor males. With this technology, a single elite male donor could give rise to huge numbers of progeny, potentially as much as all the production animals in a particular time period. One hundred replicates of variou ...[more]

PMID: 30563834

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Project description:BackgroundOptimum contribution selection (OCS) is effective for increasing genetic gain, controlling the rate of inbreeding and enables maintenance of genetic diversity. However, this diversity may be caused by high migrant contributions (MC) in the population due to introgression of genetic material from other breeds, which can threaten the conservation of small local populations. Therefore, breeding objectives should not only focus on increasing genetic gains but also on maintaining genetic originality and diversity of native alleles. This study aimed at investigating whether OCS was improved by including MC and modified kinships that account for breed origin of alleles. Three objective functions were considered for minimizing kinship, minimizing MC and maximizing genetic gain in the offspring generation, and we investigated their effects on German Angler and Vorderwald cattle.ResultsIn most scenarios, the results were similar for Angler and Vorderwald cattle. A significant positive correlation between MC and estimated breeding values of the selection candidates was observed for both breeds, thus traditional OCS would increase MC. Optimization was performed under the condition that the rate of inbreeding did not exceed 1% and at least 30% of the maximum progress was achieved for all other criteria. Although traditional OCS provided the highest breeding values under restriction of classical kinship, the magnitude of MC in the progeny generation was not controlled. When MC were constrained or minimized, the kinship at native alleles increased compared to the reference scenario. Thus, in addition to constraining MC, constraining kinship at native alleles is required to ensure that native genetic diversity is maintained. When kinship at native alleles was constrained, the classical kinship was automatically lowered in most cases and more sires were selected. However, the average breeding value in the next generation was also lower than that obtained with traditional OCS.ConclusionsFor local breeds with historical introgressions, current breeding programs should focus on increasing genetic gain and controlling inbreeding, as well as maintaining the genetic originality of the breeds and the diversity of native alleles via the inclusion of MC and kinship at native alleles in the OCS process.

Project description:Cowpea is one of the most important grain legumes in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). It provides strong support to the livelihood of small-scale farmers through its contributions to their nutritional security, income generation and soil fertility enhancement. Worldwide about 6.5 million metric tons of cowpea are produced annually on about 14.5 million hectares. The low productivity of cowpea is attributable to numerous abiotic and biotic constraints. The abiotic stress factors comprise drought, low soil fertility, and heat while biotic constraints include insects, diseases, parasitic weeds, and nematodes. Cowpea farmers also have limited access to quality seeds of improved varieties for planting. Some progress has been made through conventional breeding at international and national research institutions in the last three decades. Cowpea improvement could also benefit from modern breeding methods based on molecular genetic tools. A number of advances in cowpea genetic linkage maps, and quantitative trait loci associated with some desirable traits such as resistance to Striga, Macrophomina, Fusarium wilt, bacterial blight, root-knot nematodes, aphids, and foliar thrips have been reported. An improved consensus genetic linkage map has been developed and used to identify QTLs of additional traits. In order to take advantage of these developments single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) genotyping is being streamlined to establish an efficient workflow supported by genotyping support service (GSS)-client interactions. About 1100 SNPs mapped on the cowpea genome were converted by LGC Genomics to KASP assays. Several cowpea breeding programs have been exploiting these resources to implement molecular breeding, especially for MARS and MABC, to accelerate cowpea variety improvement. The combination of conventional breeding and molecular breeding strategies, with workflow managed through the CGIAR breeding management system (BMS), promises an increase in the number of improved varieties available to farmers, thereby boosting cowpea production and productivity in SSA.

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Dataset Information

A Strategy To Exploit Surrogate Sire Technology in Livestock Breeding Programs.

Publications

A Strategy To Exploit Surrogate Sire Technology in Livestock Breeding Programs.

Similar Datasets

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