Cytoplasmic line effects for birth weight and preweaning growth traits in the Asturiana de los Valles beef cattle breed A. Pun a , F. Goyache b , I. Cervantes a , J.P. Gutiérrez a, ⁎ a Departamento de Producción Animal, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Avda. Puerta de Hierro s/n, E-28040-Madrid, Spain b SERIDA-Somió, C/ Camino de los Claveles 604, E-33203 Gijón (Asturias), Spain article info abstract Article history: Received 28 June 2011 Received in revised form 9 September 2011 Accepted 12 September 2011 A total of 15,645 records of birth weight (BrW), weaning weight (WW) and average daily gain (ADG) from 6055 cows belonging to 2121 different dam lines were analyzed to quantify the contribution of cytoplasmic line (l) effects to phenotypic variance of preweaning growth traits in a sample of Asturiana de los Valles beef cattle breed. Only dam lines with 2 or more cows having performance records in the database were used. Bayesian estimates were obtained fit- ting eight different univariate and multivariate models defined depending on the inclusion or not of the permanent maternal environment (c) and the l effects. Univariate models that in- cluded both the c and the l effects had the best fit with data (assessed by computing the log- arithm of the conditional predictive ordinate; logCPO) for BrW and ADG while for WW this was the case for the model that only included the c effect. For multivariate models, the best fit with data was obtained for the model that only included the c effect (logCPO = -245,899) while the second “better” model was that which only include the l effect value (logCPO =-241,108). In general, whatever the estimation model used, estimates of heritabil- ity for the direct (h 2 ) and maternal (m 2 ) genetic effects and the genetic correlation between them (r am ) obtained in the current study for BrW were slightly higher (r am more negative) than the most recent estimates reported in the breed. However, this is not true for WW and ADG when multivariate estimation models include the l effect. In these cases, estimates of h 2 and m 2 for WW and ADG tend to be lower and r am less negative than those previously estimat- ed. In conclusion, the cytoplasmic line may have a marginal effect on growth performance in beef cattle but not sufficient in magnitude to justify including the l effect in models in beef im- provement schemes. © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Average daily gain Beef cattle Birth weight Cytoplasmic effect Weaning weight 1. Introduction Maternal effects include any influence from a dam on its off- spring, excluding the effects of directly transmitted genes that affect performance of the offspring (Legates, 1972). Biological mechanisms explaining maternal effects may be partially relat- ed to mitochondrial DNA, which is almost exclusively mater- nally inherited (Gibson et al., 1997). In dairy cattle, cytoplasmic line (l) effects could explain from 0 to 5% of variation in performance, with the weight of ev- idence pointing to the low end of this range (Gibson et al., 1997). In beef cattle, l effect has not been identified as a signif- icant source of variation for performance (Northcutt et al., 1991; Tess and MacNeil, 1994; Tess and Robison, 1990) or bull fertility traits (Garmyn et al., 2010). In sheep, l effects have been suggested to be of little importance for growth traits in both pure (Maniatis and Pollott, 2002; Snowder et al., 2004.) and composite breeds (Hanford et al., 2003; Van Vleck et al., 2002). Estimates of l effect may be biased downwards due to in- complete or incorrect pedigree information. Misidentification Livestock Science 143 (2012) 177–183 ⁎ Corresponding author at: Department of Animal Production, Faculty of Veterinary, UCM. Avda. Puerta del Hierro s/n, E-28040 Madrid, Spain. Tel./ fax: +34 913943767. E-mail address: gutgar@vet.ucm.es (J.P. Gutiérrez). 1871-1413/$ – see front matter © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.livsci.2011.09.008 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Livestock Science journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/livsci