Rumen bacteria do not provide improved genetic evaluation of dairy traits in sheep

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Martinez Boggio, Guillermo | Christensen, Ole F | Legarra, Andres | Allain, Charlotte | Meynadier, Annabelle | Marie-Etancelin, Christel

Edité par CCSD -

International audience. It is now widely accepted that animals' phenotypes are determined by the host genetic and the microbiome composition. For the genetic evaluation purpose, our objectives are to estimate the heritability and microbiability, and the additive metagenomic effect, assuming that these two components have additive effects. In this study were included, as dairy traits, milk production, fat and protein content; and 16S rRNA gene of rumen bacteria of 795 ewes. Two genomic models were used, a first model to predict individual microbiome contribution to phenotypes; and a second model to predict genetic effects on this predicted microbiome contribution. Results showed that the microbiabilities for milk traits were close to zero, and the residual heritabilities were not different from the trait heritabilities. By disentangling the milk traits' variance explained by the microbiome, we conclude that rumen bacteria abundances do not provide improved genetic evaluation of dairy traits in Lacaune sheep.