应用广义回归神经网络进行土壤空间变异研究

对土壤性质空间变异的充分了解,是土壤养分管理和合理施肥的基础。90年代以来,随着发达国家精确农业技术的开展,土壤特性的空间变异和空间插值技术研究得到众多农学家和土壤科学工作者的关注和重视[1,2 ] 。由法国学者Matheron于2 0世纪6 0年代建立起来的地统计学(Geostatistic     

Genetic variation in PLAG1 is associated with early fertility in Australian Brahman cattle

Variation in the genome region coding for PLAG1 has well-documented associations with skeletal growth and age at puberty in cattle. However, the influence of PLAG1 on other economically important traits such as cow stayability has not yet been explored. Here we investigate the effect of PLAG1 variation on early and later in life female fertility, as well as size and growth, in a well-phenotyped Australian Brahman herd. Yearly pregnancy and productivity records were collected from 2,839 genotyped Brahman cows and used to generate fertility, growth, and weight phenotypes. A variant on chromosome 14 in PLAG1 ({"type":"entrez-nucleotide","attrs":{"text":"NC_037341.1","term_id":"1378962600","term_text":"NC_037341.1"}}NC_037341.1:g.23338890G>T, rs109815800) was previously determined to be a putative causative mutation associated with variation in cattle stature. The imputed PLAG1 genotype at this variant was isolated for each animal and the effect of PLAG1 genotype on each trait was estimated using linear modeling. Regardless of how heifer fertility was measured, there was a significant (P < 0.05) and desirable relationship between the additive effects of PLAG1 genotype and successful heifer fertility. Heifers with two copies of the alternate allele (TT) conceived earlier and had higher pregnancy and calving rates. However, the effects of PLAG1 genotype on fertility began to diminish as cows aged and did not significantly influence stayability at later ages. While there was no effect of genotype on growth, PLAG1 had a negative effect on mature cow weight (P < 0.01), where females with two copies of the alternate allele (TT) were significantly smaller than those with either one or none. Selection emphasis on improved Brahman heifer fertility will likely increase the frequency of the T allele of rs109815800, which may also increase herd profitability and long-term sustainability through improved reproductive efficiency and reduced mature cow size.