Evaluating Sires from Commercial Progeny Data Using Pooled DNA

Abstract Text: This study proposed to use genotypes from pooled DNA samples of progeny to evaluate sires’ performance in a commercial flock. Blood samples were collected from 786 one year old Merino sheep in a commercial flock in southern Victoria, Australia. Animals were grouped into cohorts by dag score phenotype and sex. Eighty blood samples were collected within each cohort and randomly allocated to two equally sized pools. Pooled samples were assayed with the Ovine SNP 50 chip and allele frequencies estimated for each SNP in each pool. Blood was also collected from 33 sires of the commercial flock and genotyped. Sire allele contributions were estimated and these contributions were not randomly distributed across pool dag scores (P = 0.015). Genotyping pooled DNA of progeny and genotyping sires can be utilized as an estimate of sire performance for a difficult to measure, but commercially important trait.

Keywords: genotype, phenotype, pooled DNA