Predicting puberty in Brahman heifers and bulls

• Grant number: 22/14314-6
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: January 30, 2023
• End date: May 29, 2023
• Field of knowledge: Agronomical Sciences - Veterinary Medicine - Animal Reproduction
• Principal Investigator: Angélica Simone Cravo Pereira
• Grantee: Gabriela Lomba Dasqueve
• Supervisor: Mario Binelli
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Medicina Veterinária e Zootecnia (FMVZ). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: University of Florida, Gainesville (UF), United States
• Associated to the scholarship: 22/02314-1 - Physico-chemical attributes of the meat from progenies of representative bulls of the Wagyu Kuroge breed, BP.IC

Abstract

Puberty is one of the most important phases of the production cycle of beef cattle, as it is when the reproductive organs become functional and the animals begin their fertile life. The reproduction of beef cattle has the ability to maintain livestock activity, expand the herd and genetically select more fertile and sexually precocious animals, in addition to other desirable characteristics in a beef herd. Sexual precocity is a desirable characteristic, since earlier animals shorten the production cycle, resulting in greater availability of animals for the producer. The Brahman breed (Bos indicus subspecies) is traditionally used in beef cattle, however, its puberty is considered late compared to Bos taurus animals. In this sense, it is important to promote selection tools that seek to identify and develop puberty earlier in Brahman cattle. Given this, omics tools have enabled the understanding between genes and phenotype, and metabolomics is responsible for understanding the role of blood metabolites through the information contained in it. Metabolomics have been introduced mainly in reproduction, seeking to understand how plasma metabolites act in tropical cattle (such as Brahman) and how the information contained in them can help in the prediction of puberty, however there are few studies developed about it. Therefore, the objective of this proposal is to evaluate if blood metabolites can be used as markers to predict puberty in Brahman bulls and heifers, using pubertal and pre-pubertal animals, which will undergo blood plasma collections and with that, the information contained in it will be analyzed and how they can help predict puberty in these animals. (AU)