Sheep & Goats

Genetic evaluation of cashmere fiber traits in goats from the United States and New Zealand

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Abstract

Cashmere is produced globally, and despite decades of research on cashmere fiber in various countries, genetic selection tools remain limited. The objective of this study was to estimate the heritability and repeatability of cashmere fiber traits, estimate genetic correlations between fiber traits, and identify candidate genes near significant single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) for fiber traits. Three separate analyses of cashmere fiber traits were performed depending on the goat's origin: the United States (US), New Zealand (NZ), and combined from both origins. International collaboration and data sharing enabled the analysis of combined origins, given that there was gene flow between the two populations. Producers voluntarily submitted fiber samples to either the Texas A&M Bill Sims Wool and Mohair Research Laboratory (San Angelo, Texas) or SGS Wool Testing Services (Kilbirnie, New Zealand) for characterization of fiber traits. Between the US and NZ datasets, a total of 3,336 fiber records from 2,572 goats were available. Fiber traits studied in all three analyses included mean fiber diameter (MFD), standard deviation of diameter (SDD), coefficient of variation of diameter (CVD), curvature (CURV), standard deviation of curvature (SDCURV), spinning fineness (SpinF), and percentage of fibers with diameter ≤ 19 µm (Perc19). Additional fiber traits analyzed in the US-only analysis were staple length, greasy fleece weight, and coarse edge micron. Additional fiber traits analyzed in the NZ-only analysis were down staple length, yield, fleece weight, down weight, coarse edge, and percentage of medullated fibers. Participating producers provided pedigree information and all animals were genotyped using the Goat GGP 70K BeadChip (Neogen Corp.). Variance components for each trait were estimated using single step genomic BLUP (ssGBLUP) with the BLUPF90 suite of programs. Fixed effects including age at fiber collection, sex, and contemporary group were tested for model inclusion for each trait. Heritability and repeatability estimates for shared traits were similar across all three analyses. In the combined analysis, the heritability of MFD, SDD, CVD, CURV, SDCURV, SpinF, and Perc19 was 0.46 ± 0.04, 0.26 ± 0.04, 0.26 ± 0.04, 0.33 ± 0.04, 0.24 ± 0.04, 0.40 ± 0.04, and 0.29 ± 0.04, respectively. Heritability and repeatability of cashmere fiber traits were generally moderate to high. Mean fiber diameter had unfavorable genetic correlations with CVD and SDCURV. Several significant SNP for the cashmere traits were identified by genome-wide association study. Candidate genes located within ± 50 kb of significant SNP were involved in fiber-related biological pathways or skin and hair biology in other species, including humans and mice. These results suggest that improvement of cashmere fiber through genetic selection is feasible. Together, these findings provide a foundational resource for future development of a genetic selection tool for cashmere fiber production.

Keywords: 2026

How to Cite:

Dressler, E., Bormann, J., Weaber, R., Merkel, R. & Rolf, M., (2026) “Genetic evaluation of cashmere fiber traits in goats from the United States and New Zealand”, World Congress on Genetics Applied to Livestock Production Digital Archive 2026(1): 2284912. doi: https://doi.org/10.31274/wcgalp.23621

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