Genetic characterization of cashmere goat () populations in Mongolia.

Objective: Characterization studies of the phenotypic and genetic diversity of Mongolian goats are limited, despite several goat breeds being registered in the country. This study aimed to evaluate the phenotypic and genetic diversity of 14 cashmere goat populations in Mongolia, consisting largely of identified goat breeds.

Methods: Body weight, cashmere quality, and coat color were the phenotypic traits considered in this study.

Genome-wide association study for milking speed in Fleckvieh cattle.

Milking speed is an important trait influencing the udder health of dairy cows, as well as labor efficiency. However, it has received little attention in genomic association studies. The main objective of this study was to determine regions and genes on the genome with a potential effect on milking speed in Fleckvieh (dual-purpose Simmental) cattle.

Genomic analysis of conservation status, population structure, and admixture in local Czech and Slovak dairy goat breeds.

Although dairy goat production, characterized by traditional production on small farms, is an important source of income in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, locally adapted breeds have not been fully consolidated over the last 100 yr due to large fluctuations in population size and inconsistent breeding programs that allowed for different crossbreeding strategies. Our main objective in this study was therefore to assess the conservation status of 4 Czech (Alpine Goat, White Shorthair, Brown Shorthair, and Czech Landrace) and 1 Slovak (Slovak White Shorthair) local goat breeds, to analyze their population structure and admixture, and to estimate their relatedness to several neighboring breeds. Our analyses included 142 goats belonging to 5 local breeds genotyped with the Illumina 50K BeadChip, and 618 previously genotyped animals representing 15 goat breeds from Austria and Switzerland (all analyses based on 46,862 autosomal SNPs and 760 animals).