Plant & Animal Genomes XVII Conference

January 10-14, 2009
Town & Country Convention Center
San Diego, CA

Towards Genomic Selection Of Dairy Cattle Adapted To An Environment Altered By Climate Change

Ben J Hayes¹ , Phil J Bowman¹ , Amanda J Chamberlain¹ , Bertrand C.Y Collard¹ , Kathryn M Guthridge¹ , John W Forster¹ , M E Goddard^1,2

¹  Department of Primary Industries, Victorian AgriBiosciences Centre, La Trobe Research and Development Park, Bundoora, Victoria 3083, Australia

²  Faculty of Land and Food Resources, University of Melbourne, Parkville 3010, Australia

Continued agricultural production in areas predicted to be most affected by climate change will be a major challenge in coming decades [Stern, N. (2006) The economics of climate change: The Stern review, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge]. In this project, our aim was to discover panels of DNA markers, in the form of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), affecting milk production to enable accelerated genetic gain for profitability in the dairy industry, both under the current production systems and in an environment with increased heat stress and a level of feeding that may be either higher or lower than that used today. A genome wide association study was conducted, using the ‘BovineSNP50 Beadchip’ (Illumina) featuring >54,000 SNPs that uniformly span the bovine genome, to detect SNPs associated with the sensitivity of milk production to environmental conditions. To do this we combined historical milk production and weather records with dense SNP genotypes of dairy sires with many daughters milking across a wide range of production environments in Australia. A cluster of significant SNPs on chromosome nine, validated in an independent phenotypic data set, implicates a number of promising candidate genes. The validated SNPs will enable genomic selection for high milk production under anticipated climate change scenarios. For example, selection of sires with daughters which are relatively insensitive to elevated temperatures at the time of milking, or sires with daughters which will be most productive at low levels of feeding.