Pedigree information and breeding program: a pathway to Pantaneiro Sheep

Following the colonization of the Mato Grosso do Sul, was introduced one ecotype or group of sheep called Pantaneiro. Different institutions and research groups have joined efforts to characterize and preserve these animals. However, many of the results are still insufficient, the absence of an integrated management and conservation programs could lead them to extinction. Therefore, the aim of this project is estimate the genetic diversity (GD) and inbreeding level of the Pantaneiro sheep (UFGD herd), based on a database created for kinships management. For this, we used three software (POPLINK: developed by the Lincoln Park Zoo USA, GENECOC: by Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation - Embrapa and PMx v.1.3.2 (Ballou et al., 2014). Information found, field notes and knowledge of employees are now being scanned. Part of this database was analyzed, such as demographic reports, reproductive and pedigree herds. We estimated from the database, 439 relationship entries with births between 2011 and 2015 (254 females - 56 of them founders who are in the herd since 2011; and 185 ram lambs - and only eight ram). Of this total, we observed 127 mothers and eight different sires, the average number of lambs per mother was 2.89, and only three breeding males accounted for 73% of births. The average interval between births was 345 days, 85.31% of single births and 14.69% resulted in multiple births. The preliminary analysis also showed that the gene diversity, only based in kinship information, is 0.96 and mean inbreeding is 0.0037. The GD and inbreeding level are acceptable for conservation plan, but still missing the history of the founders and analyze others herds. Moreover, we observed that the use of the same and few males, for long time, may undermine the GD in a few generations. Therefore, the creation of this database and genetic measured parameters seems to be the pathway to establish an efficient and conscious program for conservation and genetic breeding, not only for UFGD herds, but needs to be extended to the Pantaneiro population of the Mato Grosso do Sul.