QTCC: From Quantitative Trait Correlation to Causation in dairy cattle

The goal of this joint project between the universities of Hohenheim, Kiel, and Göttingen is to analyze the shared genetic architecture, correlations, and causalities of multiple breeding traits in the important German Holstein dairy cattle breed. The focus is on milk yield and feed efficiency traits, as well as health and fertility traits. The comprehensive and detailed analysis of the genetic correlations between the quantitative breeding traits using modern genomic methods should enable the identification of evolutionary and functional genome regions that are of particular importance for the shared genetic architecture. The results are of great importance both for the interpretation of trait relationships and for further breeding for high performance in health and other fitness traits.