Weekly Update: 15/04/16

Continued Progress with OVIGEN

At this point almost 7,000 genotypes are now returned from the lab for the pedigree sheep involved in OVIGEN. There are still quite a number of samples to be genotyped and these are being forwarded to the lab on a regular basis as they are collected and catalogued on the Sheep Ireland database. The next step will now be to analyse this data and this work has already begun. Some early results should be available in the comings weeks.

All OVIGEN flock visits are now completed. All 2015 LambPlus breeders were afforded multiple opportunities to partake in the project and avail of this free genotyping. Our initial intention was to cease all flock visits at the end of 2015, but due to breeder demand we continued to visit flocks up to recently. Any 2015 LambPlus breeder that notified us of their interest in taking part in OVIGEN have now been visited.

 

Breed Mapping Analysis

One of the initial objectives of OVIGEN was to assess the genetic relationship between our different sheep breeds. In the past number of weeks we have collected DNA samples from a number of other breeds to include in our DNA breed map. We have recently collected samples from a number of Hampshire Down, Swaledale, Highlander and Primera Breeders. These will now be sent for genotyping and will be included in the breed map once results are available. See below for the latest version of the breed map.

Weekley Update1504