The inheritance of coat colours and patterns in the Dutch Landrace Goat

Abstract

In the last decades, the Dutch Landrace goat has successfully been re-established in the Netherlands. This involved crossing in exotic breeds and with that losing the authentic genetic diversity. The goal of the LFNL is to conserve the Dutch Landrace goat and all its colours and patterns. This research has shown that over the years, the amount of colour combinations grew, creating a larger diversity of combinations. When looking at the proportions of colours, some colours percentwise occur more or less in the population over the years. To make certain phenotypes more prevalent in the population, the goat's genetic characteristics can be looked at. In this research pedigree data suggests a recessive black and a dominant brown pigment type within the Dutch Landrace. As for the two pattern types, the characteristic dorsal stripe pattern shows mostly dominant inheritance, but the white markings inherit in a more complicated way. This information can be compared to research that already was performed in goats. As previous research suggests, multiple loci, i.e., Agouti, Extension, TYRP1, EDNRA and KIT, are involved with the inheritance of goat phenotypes. To find out which CNVS are present on which loci, further research is necessary. After that, a choice can be made when crossing in breeds that are known to dominantly inherit certain phenotypes.