ASSOCIATION OF A SINGLE NUCLEOTIDE POLYMORPHISM IN THE CALNEURON 1 GENE ON MEAT QUALITY AND CARCASS TRAITS IN HANWOO (BOS TAURUS COREANAE)

The distribution and amount of intramuscular fat, collectively scored as marbling, is an economically important trait in beef cattle. Hanwoo (Bos Taurus coreanae) is the premium beef cattle in Korea. A previous GWAS analysis on Hanwoo had showed that an SNP located in the CALN1 gene had a very strong association with Marbling. This SNP referred to as g.29172875A>G, was genotyped on Hanwoo tissue samples (n = 1103) collected from throughout Korea. The genotype frequencies were 0.152, 0.439 and 0.408 for AA, AG and GG, respectively. The association study confirmed significant association with marbling (P < 0.0001) and loin eye muscle area (P = 0.001), with strong additive genetic effects. Significant departure from Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium was not detected. The findings suggest that the CALN1 SNP polymorphism is strongly associated with marbling and loin eye muscle area and can be used as a robust marker for marker based selective breeding programs in Hanwoo.