Determining Heat Stress Effects of Multiple Genetic Traits in Tropical Dairy Cattle Using Single-Step Genomic BLUP

Abstract

Heat stress is becoming a significant problem in dairy farming, especially in tropical countries, making accurate genetic selection for heat tolerance a priority. This study investigated the effect of heat stress manifestation on genetics for milk yield, milk quality, and dairy health traits with and without genomic information using single-step genomic best linear unbiased prediction (ssGBLUP) and BLUP in Thai-Holstein crossbred cows. The dataset contained 104,150 test-day records from the first lactation of 15,380 Thai-Holstein crossbred cows. A multiple-trait random regression test-day model on a temperature-humidity index (THI) function was used to estimate the genetic parameters and genetic values. Heat stress started at a THI of 76, and the heritability estimates ranged from moderate to low. The genetic correlation between those traits and heat stress in both BLUP methods was negative. The accuracy of genomic predictions in the ssGBLUP method was higher than the BLUP method. In conclusion, heat stress negatively impacted milk production, increased the somatic cell score, and disrupted the energy balance. Therefore, in dairy cattle genetic improvement programs, heat tolerance is an important trait. The new genetic evaluation method (ssGBLUP) should replace the traditional method (BLUP) for more accurate genetic selection.

Keywords: Thai-Holstein crossbred; heat tolerance; milk fat-to-protein ratio; milk yield; somatic cell score.