Unraveling metabolic stress response in dairy cows: genetic control of plasma biomarkers throughout lactation and the transition period

Breeding animals able to effectively respond to stress could be a long-term, sustainable, and affordable strategy to improve resilience and welfare in livestock systems. In the present study, the concentrations of 29 plasma biomarkers were used as candidate endophenotypes for metabolic stress response in single-SNP, gene- and hap- lotype-based GWAS using 739 healthy lactating Italian Holstein cows and 88,271 variants. Significant genetic associations were found in all the 3 GWAS approaches for...