Abstract:

Selection focused only on productive traits, which has been the case in small ruminant breeding programs for many years, has resulted in damage to fitness traits. This deterioration could be due, in part, to increased homozygosity in specific genomic regions linked to these traits. With this hypothesis, this study has made use of genomic information from HD chips to characterize ROH regions sheep to explore whether there has been an increase in homozygosity in genome regions associated with traits of economic interest for the breeding program. Results show an increase in homozygosity in regions associated with productive (milk, fat, and protein yields), reproductive (reproductive seasonality), or health traits (clinical mastitis), among others.