Performance of Beef Heifers of Various Genetic Groups, Supplemented or Not, in Coastcross Pastures

The objective of this study was to determine whether the performance of beef heifers of different genetic groups was affected by breed x nutritional environment interactions. Sixty four weaned heifers, 16 per genetic group: ½ Angus + ½ Nellore (AN), ½ Canchim + ½ Nellore (CN), ½ Simmental + ½ Nellore (SN) and pure Nellore (NE), were used with or without 3.0 kg of concentrate.animal-1 .day-1 in a fertilized coastcross pasture under rotational grazing system. There were effects of genetic group and supplementation (P\u3c 0.05) on the weight and age at first estrus, but there was no interaction between them. In a rotational grazing system with 4000 kg of available dry matter per hectare with 13% of crude protein, the crossbred AN, supplemented or not, was more precocious (111 days) than Nellore heifers, showing the first estrus at 356 days of age and 324 kg of live weight

Performance of Nellore Cattle under Two Grazing Management Systems

The objective of this study was to evaluate the effects of grazing intensification on birth weight (BW), weaning weight (WW, standartized to 205 days), average daily gain from birth to weaning (ADG), and gestation length (GL) of calves, cow weight at calving (CWC) and at weaning (CWW), cow condition score at calving (CCC) and at weaning (CCW), and BW/CWC (BWR), WW/CWC (WWRC) and WW/CWW (WWRW) ratios. One hundred and sixty eight Nellore calves born in 1998 and 1999, out of dams maintained in two grazing management systems were evaluated: an extensive 1.0 animal unity (AU). ha-1 system on unfertilized Brachiaria decumbens pasture (SR); and an intensive rotational 5.0 AU. ha-1 system on fertilized Brachiaria brizantha cv. Marandu and cow-calf feed supplementation during dry season (SI). Analyses of variance showed a significant (P\u3c .01) system effect on CWW and CCW, independently of year of birth of calf, a significant (P\u3c .05 and P\u3c .01) year of birth x system interaction effect on WW, ADG, BWR, WWRC and WWRW, and no effect at all on BW, CWC, CCC and GL. Results suggest that benefits of intensification were through improving production per hectare and not per animal

Phenotypic variability among pumpkin accessions in the Brazilian semiarid

The aim of this study was to estimate the phenotypic divergence among fourteen pumpkins accessions of the cucurbits Germplasm Active Bank of Embrapa Semiárido, in order to support breeding program to these species. Nine morphoagronomic descriptors were analyzed by the principal components and by UPGMA techniques. In the analysis of principal components, the formation of three contrasting clusters was observed, each one composed of two accessions. There occurred also the formation of one core group composed of five accessions, being the accessions called 683 and 684 collected in Bahia and the other in Maranhão. The most divergent accessions were 620, 624 and 748. The variables of the greatest contribution to the genetic divergence were diameter, weight and average length of the fruit. In the UPGMA analysis, obtained from the symmetric matrices generated by the Mahalanobis distance for the nine descriptors, there was the formation of one core group, composed of ten accessions, whose similarity was 45.71%, with geographically divergent accessions presenting the greatest similarity. Three accessions were not clustered with others. The study identified phenotypic variability for the analyzed characters and the absence of relationship between place of collection and phenotypic diversity

New single sucleotide polymorphisms in Guzerá breed revealed by whole-genome re-sequencing.

The objective of our work was to sequence and assemble the Guzerá genome in order to identify race-­specific variations that might be used in breeding programs.X-meeting BSB 2013. Abstract 76