Genealogical analysis in small populations: the case of four Slovak beef cattle breeds

Abstract

The aim of the paper was to evaluate the genetic diversity in four beef cattle populations in Slovakia by the methods of pedigree analysis. The pedigree populations consisted of (reference populations in brackets) 481 (116) Blonde d`Aquitaine (BA) animals, 3,955 (1,772) Charolais (CH), 2,063 (786) Limousine (LI) and 916 (429) Simmental (SM). The highest inbreeding coefficient was in SM (3.87 %) and the lowest one in BA (0.33 %). Effective population size was computed via increase in inbreeding: 467.60 BA, 152.92 CH, 428.73 LI and 47.62 SM. The effective number of founders was 83, 233, 229 and 30 in BA, CH, LI and SM, respectively and the effective number of ancestors was 20, 72, 55, 13 in BA, CH, LI, SM, respectively. Contributions of animals to reference population were calculated. Unbalanced distribution of the most important ancestors within assessed populations was observed. The most significant genetic diversity loss was estimated in Simmental population.