The Waldviertel Blond - An Autochthonous Austrian cattle breed and its genetic characterisation

Abstract

The aim of our work was to examine the Austrian autochthone breed Waldviertel Blond Cattle on the basis of mitochondrial DNA. The founder sampling was used to increase the representation of sample on the level of mitochondrial haplotypes. Sixteen families were selected after the pedigree processing (yED software) from our 60 frozen blood samples. 15 different haplotypes were identified after the sequencing of the 16 samples. Genetic distances between the Waldviertel Blond and other groups of breeds, which include European, African, Near Eastern and Asian breeds, were estimated with Dloop sequences of Bos taurus breeds. A certain influence of the Hungarian Grey into the breed of the WV was expected but was found to be less likely than the relationship to other European cattle breeds such as the Mariahofer or the Mürztaler. These investigations were made to probably support the progress of the genetic preservation programme of the Waldviertel Blond, even if the importance of the mtDNA haplotype preservation cannot be estimated exactly today. There is a need of collecting more representative samples in order to estimate the question of relationship to other breeds more exactly.