Genomic selection for feed intake and weight gain assuming different prior distributions in Nellore beef cattle

Abstract Text: Data of 640 Nellore males evaluated for dry matter intake (DMI) and average daily gain (ADG) and genotyped in Illumina BovineSNP50 were analyzed under three different Bayesian approaches to estimate markers effects. Almost no difference in the magnitude or rank of markers’ effect estimations was observed. The higher percentage of additive genetic variance explained by markers’ effect was 5.30% for DMI by Bayes B and 1.18% for ADG by Bayes C. A set of 364 SNPs that were top 1% for additive genetic variance explained for DMI and ADG presented correlations of 0.17 and 0.32, respectively, between estimates of classical breeding values and genomic breeding values. Among those, 15 SNPs were in common for both traits and the exploration of their region identified QTL regions previously described to be associated with residual feed intake, average daily gain and body weight.

Keywords: Dry matter intake, Average daily gain, SNP