Mitochondrial DNA Polymorphism, Maternal Lineage and Correlations with Postnatal Growth of Japanese Black Beef Cattle to Yearling Age

Mitochondrial DNA haplotypes from the displacement-loop (D-loop) region (436 bp) were genotyped and sequenced in Japanese Black beef cattle raised in the same herd. Correlation coefficients between mitochondrial DNA haplotypes, maternal lineage, birth weight, preweaning average daily gain, weaning weight, post weaning average daily gain and yearling weight were computed. The objective was to study the relationship between maternal and postnatal growth traits and to investigate if postnatal growth of calves to yearling age could be accurately predicted from mitochondrial DNA haplotypes. Results of the phylogenetic analysis revealed 17 maternal lineages and four mitochondrial DNA haplotypes. There were strong, positive and highly significant (p<0.001) correlations among maternal traits ranging from 0.52 to 0.98. Similarly, among postnatal growth traits, most of the correlations were also strong, positive and highly significant (p<0.001); the highest correlation of 0.94 was between preweaning average daily gain and weaning weight. However, correlations between mitochondrial DNA haplotypes and postnatal growth traits were very low, mostly negative and non-significant (p>0.05) ranging from -0.05 to 0.1. Prediction of postnatal growth from mitochondrial DNA yielded very low R2 values ranging from 0.002 to 0.019. It was concluded that mitochondrial DNA polymorphism has no significant association with postnatal growth from birth to yearling age, and by implication, nuclear rather than cytoplasmic DNA, accounts for most of the genetic variation observed in postnatal growth of Japanese Black cattle. Therefore, mitochondrial DNA genotyping at an early age has no bearing on the accurate prediction of the future growth performance of calves.