Advances on genome-wide association study for economically im-portant traits in dairy cattle

Milk performance traits have been considered as the most important production traits. With the development of balance breeding sense, much attention has been paid to the functional traits such as reproduction, type, health, and longevity traits, which is put into breeding programs. Identification of major genes or genetic markers for milk production and functional traits and their applications in breeding programs of dairy cattle are expected to improve the genetic progress of these traits. Occurrence of millions of SNPs in whole genome and high throughout genotyping techniques has made genome-wide association study to be an important strategy to identify genes responsible for economic traits in domestic animals. This paper reviewed the advances on genome-wide association study for milk production traits and functional traits in dairy cattle.