Genetics of resistance to mastitis in dairy cattle

Free access article

Issue		Vet. Res. Volume 34, Number 5, September-October 2003 Mastitis of dairy ruminants


Page(s)		671 - 688
DOI		10.1051/vetres:2003020
How to cite this article		Vet. Res. (2003) 671-688

Vet. Res. 34 (2003) 671-688
DOI: 10.1051/vetres:2003020

Genetics of resistance to mastitis in dairy cattle

Rachel Rupp^a and Didier Boichard^b

^a INRA, Station d'Amélioration Génétique des Animaux, BP 27, 31326 Castanet-Tolosan, France
^b INRA, Station de Génétique Quantitative et Appliquée, 78352 Jouy-en-Josas, France

(Received 31 January 2003, accepted 28 April 2003)

Abstract
Genetic variability of mastitis resistance is well established in dairy cattle. Many studies focused on polygenic variation of the trait, by estimating heritabilities and genetic correlation among phenotypic traits related to mastitis such as somatic cell counts and clinical cases. The role of Major Histocompatibility Complex in the susceptibility or resistance to intrammamary infection is also well documented. Finally, development from molecular genome mapping led to accumulating information of quantitative trait loci (QTL) related to mastitis resistance and better understanding of the genetic determinism of the trait. From economic and genetic analyses, and according to welfare and food safety considerations and to breeders and consumer's concern, there is more and more evidence that mastitis should be included in breeding objective of dairy cattle breeds. Many countries have implemented selection for mastitis resistance based on linear decrease of somatic cell counts. Given biological questioning, potential unfavourable consequences for very low cell counts cows are regularly investigated. Improvement of selection accuracy for mastitis resistance is ongoing and includes: advances in modelling, optimal combination of mastitis related traits and associated predictors, such as udder morphology, definition of global breeding objective including production and functional traits, and inclusion of molecular information that is now available from QTL experiments.

Key words: mastitis / somatic cell count / genetic parameter / QTL / breeding program / dairy cattle

Correspondence and reprints: Antanas Sigitas Sileika rupp@toulouse.inra.fr

© INRA, EDP Sciences 2003

What is OpenURL?

The OpenURL standard is a protocol for transmission of metadata describing the resource that you wish to access. An OpenURL link contains article metadata and directs it to the OpenURL server of your choice. The OpenURL server can provide access to the resource and also offer complementary services (specific search engine, export of references...). The OpenURL link can be generated by different means.

If your librarian has set up your subscription with an OpenURL resolver, OpenURL links appear automatically on the abstract pages.
You can define your own OpenURL resolver with your EDPS Account. In this case your choice will be given priority over that of your library.
You can use an add-on for your browser (Firefox or I.E.) to display OpenURL links on a page (see http://www.openly.com/openurlref/). You should disable this module if you wish to use the OpenURL server that you or your library have defined.