Abstract:
Boran cattle provide livelihood to thousands of households in the arid and semi arid lands
(ASAL) of Kenya. Due to their superior adaptive and productive traits in comparison to other
breeds of cattle, they have also become a popular choice for breeders in Eastern and Southern
Africa. Continued genetic improvement of the breed is important and therefore accurate
performance and pedigree records are required. 178 Pedigree records and blood samples of four
Boran stud herds were evaluated for accuracy of parentage allocation using 11 microsatellite
markers recommended by ISAG for parentage verification. The panel of the 11 microsatellite
markers were found to be highly polymorphic (PIC of 0.6901) with a combined probability of
exclusion (CPE) of 0.9997. The dam misidentification was low ranging between 0 and 5% for the
herds tested. The estimated rate of mispaternity however ranged between 4.3 and 80% among the
four stud herds and more than 50% of the offspring of some herds were misidentified. The high
rate of mispaternity will have a negative impact on the response to selection. The use of DNA
markers for parentage assignment will improve the accuracy of the pedigree records of Boran
stud cattle in Kenya and contribute to more accurate selection of superior animals.
