Inheritance of body size and ultrasound carcass traits in yearling Anatolian buffalo calves

The body size and ultrasound carcass traits are related to the growth and muscling of animals. These characters promise future improvement through genetic selection in animal breeding. In breeding programs, knowing the (co)variance components serves to reveal the performance differences among animals and detection of suitable traits for selection. The research was carried out with 313 Anatolian buffalo calves born in 2019 at 36 farm operations. The least-square means for body weight (BW), wither height (WH), rump height (RH), body length (BL), chest width (CW), hip width (HW), chest circumference (CC), cannon-bone circumference (CBC), longissimus muscle area (LMA), longissimus muscle depth (LMD), and subcutaneous fat thickness (SFT) in yearling calves were 175.41 +/- 2.06 kg, 108.35 +/- 0.34, 111.85 +/- 0.37, 103.74 +/- 0.41, 33.93 +/- 0.23, 30.56 +/- 0.23, 135.18 +/- 0.60, 15.69 +/- 0.08 cm, 19.36 +/- 0.45 cm(2), 3.086 +/- 0.028, and 0.655 +/- 0.006 cm, respectively. The direct heritabilities for BW, WH, RH, BL, CW, HW, CC, CBC, LMA, LMD, and SFT were 0.334 +/- 0.032, 0.483 +/- 0.044, 0.473 +/- 0.043, 0.441 +/- 0.041, 0.364 +/- 0.034, 0.432 +/- 0.040, 0.435 +/- 0.040, 0.226 +/- 0.021, 0.0001 +/- 0.000, 0.300 +/- 0.026, and 0.539 +/- 0.046, respectively. The genetic and phenotypic correlations predicted in this study ranged from 0.02 to 0.90. All the genetic and phenotypic correlations among body size and ultrasound carcass traits were significant (P<0.01), except for the genetic correlation between CW and HW. Some polymorphisms in PLAG1, NCAPG, LCORL, and HMGA2 genes were analyzed. Two single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) for PLAG1 and NCAPG genes were found to be monomorphic in this buffalo population. Meanwhile, the effects of two SNPs in the LCORL and HMGA2 genes were not significant but showed some tendencies in the aspects of least-square means. The results of the study indicated that the Anatolian buffaloes have the potential to improve in growth and muscling characteristics.