Genetics of resistance to mastitis in dairy cattle

Abstract

Genetic variability of mastitis resistance is well established in dairy cattle. Many studies focused on polygenic variation of the trait, by estimating heritabilities and genetic correlation among phenotypic traits related to mastitis such as somatic cell counts and clinical cases. The role of Major Histocompatibility Complex in the susceptibility or resistance to intrammamary infection is also well documented. Finally, development from molecular genome mapping led to accumulating information of quantitative trait loci (QTL) related to mastitis resistance and better understanding of the genetic determinism of the trait. From economic and genetic analyses, and according to welfare and food safety considerations and to breeders and consumer's concern, there is more and more evidence that mastitis should be included in breeding objective of dairy cattle breeds. Many countries have implemented selection for mastitis resistance based on linear decrease of somatic cell counts. Given biological questioning, potential unfavourable consequences for very low cell counts cows are regularly investigated. Improvement of selection accuracy for mastitis resistance is ongoing and includes: advances in modelling, optimal combination of mastitis related traits and associated predictors, such as udder morphology, definition of global breeding objective including production and functional traits, and inclusion of molecular information that is now available from QTL experiments.