Genomic application in sheep and goat breeding

Sheep and goat breeds are selected worldwide for meat, wool, and dairy production, and breeding objectives also include other functional traits such as reproductive performance and disease resistance. In early 2007, the development of next-generation sequencing (NGS) allowed de novo sequencing of sheep (Jiang et al., 2014) and goat genomes (Dong et al., 2013). In turn, it offered an opportunity to create high-density SNP chips. The Illumina OvineSNP50 BeadChip (www.illumina.com) is a 54K SNP microarray that was developed as part of the International Sheep Genomics Consortium (ISGC; www.sheephapmap.org; Kijas et al., 2009). Similarly, the International Goat Genome Consortium (IGGC; www.goatgenome.org) was created in 2010 and promoted international effort toward the development of a 52K SNP chip for goats (Tosser-Klopp et al., 2014) commercialized by Illumina (SNP50 BeadChip; www.illumina.com). The availability of such high throughput DNA methods and tools in recent years has opened up the use of genome-wide information for sheep and goat breeding.