Candidate genes associated with economically important traits in dairy goats

AbstractGoats are important livestock species worldwide, due to their valuable commodities, including meat, milk, dairy products, fleece, and skin. Most of the economically important traits in dairy goats are complex quantitative traits, greatly influenced by polygenes and environmental factors. Hence, direct selection of these traits based on phenotypic data will not resulted a remarkable improvements in phenotypes of the traits, rather it needs to understand and include the molecular mechanisms controlling the traits in dairy goat breeding and trait selection. Consequently, following the advancement of molecular genetics and genotyping techniques, great quantities of candidate genes associated with economically important traits in different dairy goat breeds have been investigated by several scholars in the world. This review quantify candidate genes associated with the major economically important traits, including milk production, milk composition, reproduction, body conformation, environmental adaptations, and disease resistance traits in dairy goats by searching the available literature from different databases. As evidenced from literature, candidate genes have different functions on economically important traits, including regulating gene expression, protein functions, metabolism, physiological process, and expression of phenotype of the traits in dairy goats. The search of candidate genes associated with economically important traits, recognizing their genomic region, and physiological functions help breeders to identify marker-genes linked with economic traits used to attain faster selection response in dairy goat breeding. Therefore, quantifying candidate genes and their association with economically important traits will enhance the genetic improvement of dairy goats, which will improve nutritional security and the livelihoods of smallholder farmers.