Criollo Argentino Horses Diversity Characterization by Genome Wide Genotyping

MORALES-DURAND H; ZAPPA ME; DIAZ S; OLIVERA LH; CORBI-BOTTO CM; PERAL GARCIA P; SADABA SA

San Diego, USA

Congreso; Plant & Animal Genome XXVI Conference; 2018

Plant & Animal Genome XXVI Conference

Local breeds such as Criollo Argentino horses play a key role as a zoogenetic resource. Natural selection acting over almost 400 years of reproduction in freedom, promotes adaptive plasticity and phenotypic variability in Criollo horses, with desirable features such as rusticity, longevity, fertility, low precocity, physical and aerobic resistance and pain tolerance. In order to analyze genomic variation in a population of Criollo Argentino horses, we used two complementary approaches: pedigree analysis and genome-wide SNP data. Genealogical data obtained from the pedigree analysis performed in 280 horses born between 1971-2001 showed 235 founders, an effective number of 157.7 and 50 major ancestors. Genomic analysis was performed in 24 unrelated Criollo Argentino horses, 65157 SNPs were genotyped using the Illumina GGPEquine65K assay and after quality control (call rate ≥ 95%, minor allele frequency ≥ 0.05), 46524 informative SNPs were retained for analysis with a genotypic rate of 0.994. The overall mean expected heterozygosity (He) was 0.353. Polymorphic information content (PIC) showed a mean value of 0.278. Also, genomic and per chromosome linkage disequilibrium (LD) within the breed, pairwise kinship coefficient among all genotyped individuals as well as the individual inbreeding coefficient were estimated and compared to that of genealogical analysis. This study is the first genome wide SNP analysis in Criollo Argentino, and will bring information for a future program of genetic improvement, guaranteeing the conservation of the breed standards.