ASSOCIATION OF ANXA9 GENE POLYMORPHISM WITH SOME ECONOMIC TRAITS OF AWASSI SHEEP

Abstract

The study was conducted in the sheep farm of the Al-Fayhaa station in the Jableh sub-district/ Al-Musaib project (55 km south of Baghdad), as well as the Biotechnology Laboratory in the College of Agricultural Engineering Sciences/ University of Baghdad for the period from 5/1/2022 to 30/10/2022. With the aim of detection the ANXA9 gene polymorphism and its relationship with  body weight, weight gain of lambs, Litter size and wool traits ,as well as the polymorphism distribution and allele frequency in 52 Awassi sheep and its lambs, three polymorphism appeared in this variant (T>G SNP) which are TT, TG and GG, and their percentage were 51.92, 40.38 and 7.69%, and differences between them were highly significant (P≤0.01), with a frequency of 0.72 and 0.28 for the T and G alleles, respectively.  there was a significant discrepancy (P≤0.05) in the weight at weaning and at the age of 6 months for the GG genotype, as the rates for lambs with ewes carrying the GG genotype in this study were 19.25 and 26.37 kg, respectively. The results showed that was significant (P≤0.05) and superiority for mothers with the TG heterozygous compared to those with the GG in Litter size , at a rate of 1.19 and 1.00 births / litter, respectively. It turned out that there was a significant variation (P≤0.05) in the fiber diameter of wool according to the ANXA9 gene polymorphism in Awassi ewes. We can conclude by studying the ANXA9 gene polymorphism that they can be adopted in developing strategies for genetic improvement of sheep, and the application of the study to a larger sample and to several sites and extracting the interaction between two SNPs would give more accurate results and determine the best method for managing and improving sheep flocks.