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The use of frozen semen to minimize inbreeding in small populations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 September 2002

ANNA K. SONESSON ,
MIKE E. GODDARD  and
THEO H. E. MEUWISSEN
ANNA K. SONESSON
Affiliation:
ID-Lelystad, Institute for Animal Science and Health, PO Box 65, 8200 AB Lelystad, The Netherlands
MIKE E. GODDARD
Affiliation:
Institute of Land and Food Resources, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria 3052 and Victorian Institute of Animal Science, Attwood, 3049 Victoria, Australia
THEO H. E. MEUWISSEN
Affiliation:
ID-Lelystad, Institute for Animal Science and Health, PO Box 65, 8200 AB Lelystad, The Netherlands Present address: Agricultural University of Norway, PO Box 5025, 1432 Ås, Norway.
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Abstract

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In this study, we compared the average coancestry and inbreeding levels for two genetic conservation schemes in which frozen semen from a gene bank is used to reduce the inbreeding in a live population. For a simple scheme in which only semen of generation-0 (G0) sires is used, the level of inbreeding asymptotes to 1/(2N), where N is the number of newborn sires in the base generation and rate of inbreeding goes to zero. However, when only sires of G0 are selected, all genes will eventually descend from the founder sires and all genes from the founder dams are lost. We propose an alternative scheme in which N sires from generation 1 (G1), as well as the N sires from G0, have semen conserved, and the semen of G0 and G1 sires is used for dams of odd and even generation numbers, respectively. With this scheme, the level of inbreeding asymptotes to 1/(3N) and the genes of founder dams are also conserved, because 50% of the genes of sires of G1 are derived from the founder dams. A computer simulation study shows that this is the optimum design to minimize inbreeding, even if semen from later generations is available.

Type
Research Article
Information
Genetics Research , Volume 80 , Issue 1 , August 2002 , pp. 27 - 30
Copyright
© 2002 Cambridge University Press