Color inheritance and inbreeding in American mink.

Abstract

The intensive phenotypic selection commonly practiced in mink farms that is mostly color driven, might lead to the selection and mating of genetically similar individuals resulting in reduction of fitness traits. In this thesis, we analyzed color inheritance of four different color types, investigated the effects of inbreeding on reproductive traits, and estimated inbreeding coefficients using both pedigree (FPED) and genomic information: runs of homozygosity (FROH) and excess of homozygosity (FHOM). It was discovered that more than 75% of the time when the same color parents were mated, offspring of the same color was produced. The effect of FPED on reproductive traits was negligible. Similarly, the average inbreeding was observed to be 0.28, -0.03, and 0.02 for FROH, FHOM, and FPED respectively. Short ROH segments were the highest in number and the longest segment was 88.58 Mb in length. These results indicated that inbreeding has been successfully avoided by the farm.