Genetic relationships between Taiwan cattle and Japanese Wagyu and European breeds by using SNP

Abstract

The Taiwan cattle (TWN) was said to be descendant of Japanese beef cattle (Wagyu) which were transported to Taiwan during the period (1895～1945) of Japanese rule, but nowadays there are only 19 of them (eight bulls, cow 11)were kept in Yangmingshan. We clarified the genetic relationships between TWN and Japanese Wagyu (JB) and additionally 7 western breeds, Hereford (HER), Simmental (SIM), short horn (SH), Angus (ANG), Holstein (HOL), Charolais (CHA) and limousine (LIM) by using SNP (Single Nucleotide Polymorphism, single nucleotide polymorphism) as genetic markers. As results of having analyzed by cluster analysis (Ward and the Group average methods), Principal Component Analysis and neighbor-joining method, TWN have been isolated for long as an independent population and western breeds groups were quite far from it.