Assessment of classic and genomic selection methods for introgression and fixed a major gene to sheep using simulation

The purpose of this study was to evaluate traditional, genomic, gene-assisted traditional selection and gene-assisted genomic selection methods for introgression a major gene in sheep population to improve the litter size trait using computer simulation. In this regard, a trait with heritability of 0.1, including two chromosomes each with a length of 100 cM, was simulated. On chromosome 1, a single QTL as the major gene was created that accounted for 40% of the total genetic variance. This QTL was located in the position of 25.7 cM. In breed A and B, animals were selected based for favorable and unfavorable to create two breeds that has been fixed for opposite alleles. Using the gene introgression approach, the favorable allele in breed A was insert to breed B and the new population was evaluated for genetic gain, accuracy of evaluation, frequencies of favorable allele and inbreeding rate. After five backcrossing generations, genetic gain in GasGenomic and Genomic methods was 26 and 62 percent higher than GasClassic and Classic methods, respectively. The frequency of favorable allele after five generations in Classic, Genomic, GasClassic and GasClassic was 0.387, 0.778, 0.965 and 0.975, respectively. The results of this study showed that if the goal is only introgression a major gene into an indigenous breed, by using gene-assisted classic selection, the frequency of a major gene can also be increased as much as obtain by the gene-assisted genomic selection.