Abstract
The population of in-milk buffaloes climbed by 4.3% in 2012–2019, as compared to the decline of 28.9% in 2007–2012, suggesting a trend reversal towards buffalo rearing due to consumer preferences and policy interventions. Moreover, Murrah buffaloes have quadrupled in the same period from 11.7 to 47.06 million headcounts, constituting about 42.8% of the total buffaloes. Analysis of selection signatures reveals important details about how the genomic environments of contemporary livestock have been altered by both natural and artificial selective pressures. In the present study to delineate signals of positive selection, a total of 246 million (98.08%) clean ddRAD.-seq reads were mapped to Bubalus bubalis reference genome assembly. CLR approach was used to detect selected regions and a total of 289 selection signatures were found in Murrah genome. The outlier fraction containing 289 sites, bracketed by a 10 kb window, 5 kb up- and down- stream were declared as the putative selection signatures. A total of 106 genes and 22 loci were traced in 179 selective sweep regions in Murrah buffalo. The information mined in this study will aid in future polymorphism studies of economic traits in buffaloes.
