Genetic and genomic relationship between methane production measured in breath and fatty acid content in milk samples from Danish Holsteins

Abstract

Abstract. In this study the objective was to estimate the genetic and genomic relationship between methane-related traits and milk fatty acid profiles. This was done using two different estimation procedures: a single nucleotide polymorphismbased genomic relationship matrix and a classical pedigree-based relationship matrix. Data was generated on three Danish Holstein herds and a total of 339 cows were available for the study. Methane phenotypes were generated in milking robots during milking over a weekly period and the milk phenotypes were quantified from milk from one milking. Genetic and genomic parameters were estimated using a mixed linear model. Results showed that heritability estimates were comparable between models, but the standard error was lower for genomic heritabilities compared with genetic heritabilities. Genetic as well as genomic correlations were highly variable and had high standard errors, reflecting a similar pattern as for the heritability estimates with lower standard errors for the genomic correlations compared with the pedigree-based genetic correlations. Many of the correlations though had a magnitude that makes further studies on larger datasets worthwhile. The results indicate that genotypes are highly valuable in studies where limited number of phenotypes can be recorded. Also it shows that there is some significant genetic association between methane in the breath of the cow and milk fatty acids profiles.

Host genetics and the rumen microbiome jointly associate with methane emissions in dairy cows

“…Within-week methane measurements had a high repeatability coefficient of 0.70 ± 0.02 (estimate ± SE). Estimated average daily methane emission was 395.8 ± 63.5 g/d (mean ± SD), which was consistent with reports from the literature[ 16 ]. Considerable variation in estimated CH 4 emission among cows was observed.…”

Accuracies of breeding values for dry matter intake using nongenotyped animals and predictor traits in different lactations

“…These estimated heritabilities of DMI1 and DMI3 were within the range (0.11 to 0.35) of previous studies presenting heritabilities (Veerkamp, 1998;Veerkamp and Thompson, 1999;Berry et al, 2007;Vallimont et al, 2010Vallimont et al, , 2011Williams et al, 2011;Spurlock et al, 2012). Estimated heritabilities of FPCM in the current study were slightly lower than previously reported heritabilities ranging between 0.27 and 0.47 (Van Arendonk et al, 1991;Veerkamp et al, 2012;Pszczola et al, 2013;Lassen et al, 2016); however, the repeatabilities were high (between 0.63 and 0.66; Table 4), meaning that a big portion of the variance was explained by the permanent environmental instead of the genetic variance. Estimated heritabilities for LW in the current study were in the range of estimates in the literature ranging from 0.43 to 0.65 (Veerkamp and Brotherstone, 1997;Koenen and Veerkamp, 1998;Berry et al, 2003;Muller et al, 2006;Dechow et al, 2010).…”

Genome-wide association identifies methane production level relation to genetic control of digestive tract development in dairy cows

“… 67 , Lassen et al . 68 and Wilson et al . 69 performed genomic prediction type analyses while searching for correlated traits.…”