Genetic Variation and Estimating Breeding Values for Small-holder Crossbred Dairy Cattle in India

Abstract

We report the results of the first large scale milk recording and genetic evaluation for crossbred cows in a smallholder dairy production system in India. Preliminary results represented 8,144 smallholder crossbred cows with a total of 140,214 daily milk records, of which 2,946 animals were genotyped with the GGP Bovine and Illumina SNP assays. Data were adjusted for fixed effects and analysed with a random regression (RR) model with the 1st degree Legendre polynomial and heterogeneous variance. Heritabilities of milk yield ranged from 0.14 to 0.22 throughout the lactation period, with an average value of 0.19. Genomic Estimated breeding values (GEBV) for the genotyped animals including the smallholder crossbred cows and the bulls and dams from the BAIF bull stud ranged from +1.9 to -1.4 kg/day. The moderate heritability of the milk yield found in our results together with the wide range of GEBV, indicate that a good response to genomic selection for milk yield can be expected for smallholder dairy farms in India.