Understanding the structure of the Brazilian Red Sindhi population using genomic information

Abstract Text: The Red Sindhi is a zebu cattle breed original from Pakistan. A small number of animals were imported to Brazil about the middle of the 20^thcentury. Nowadays, herds are concentrated in Northeast and Southeast regions, with a growing demand from beef and dairy producers. The objective of this study was to determine the structure of populations for the Red Sindhi population in Brazil using genomic information. Genotypes of 218 animals from 15 herds, comprising a set of 20,532 SNP markers, were analyzed to estimate proportions of ancestry through unsupervised hierarchical clustering of individuals, using the maximum likelihood method. The number of inferred subpopulations was 11. Some of those subpopulations were concentrated in one only herd each, leading to the conclusion that some optimum contribution selection scheme should be adopted to avoid possible future shrinking on the genetic diversity within this breed.

Keywords: admixture, genetic diversity, SNP