MISIDENTIFICATION RATE IN THE ISRAELI DAIRY-CATTLE POPULATION AND ITSIMPLICATIONS FOR GENETIC-IMPROVEMENT

The DNA microsatellites can be efficiently used to determine incorrect paternity attribution of cattle without genotyping of dams. Allelic f requencies of the population were determined for 12 microsatellites us ing the maternal alleles of 102 AI sires. The frequency of the most co mmon microsatellite allele ranged from 0.27 to 0.58. Most loci had at least one allele that was present in only a single individual. Paterni ty of 9 of 173 cows (5.2%) and 3 of 102 hulls (2.9%) was excluded beca use putative paternal alleles were not present in progeny for at least one locus. For 4 of the 9 cows and all 3 bulls, exclusion was based o n at least two loci. Mean probability of exclusion was 0.85 for cows a nd 0.99 for bulls. With an assumed cost of US $5 per genotype, a misid entification rate of 5%, and a discount rate of 0.05, additional profi t for the Israeli-Holstein breeding program from genotyping 100 test d aughters of each young sire becomes positive within 10 yr and reaches nearly US $2.4 million after 20 yr.