Signature of selection in composite Vrindavani cattle of India

Vrindavani is an Indian composite cattle breed developed by crossbreeding taurine dairy breeds with native indicine cattle in the 1960s. About 190,000 semen doses of Vrindavani bulls have been distributed to the farmers till date. The animals are under artificial and natural selection for higher milk production and adaptation to the tropical climate, respectively. However, the selection response for production and adaptation traits in the Vrindavani genome is not explored. In this study, we provide the first overview of the selection signatures in the Vrindavani genome. 96 Vrindavani cattle were genotyped using the BovineSNP50 BeadChip and the SNP genotype data of its constituent breeds were collected from a public database. Within-breed selection signatures in Vrindavani were investigated using the integrated haplotype score (iHS). Vrindavani was also compared to each of its parental breeds to discover between-population signatures of selection using two approaches, cross-population extended haplotype homozygosity (XP-EHH) and fixation index (FST). Selection of signature identifies 11 common region identified by more than one harbouring genes such as LRP1B, TNNI3K, APOB, CACNA2D1, FAM110B and SPATA17 associated with production and adaptation. Overall, our results suggested stronger selective pressure on regions responsible for adaptation compared to milk yield.