Determination of the AluI polymorphism effect of bovine growth hormone gene on carcass traits in Zavot cattle with analysis of covariance

The aim of this study was to determine the genotypes of bovine growth hormone and to investigate their association with daily weight gain in the Zavot cattle breed. The bovine growth hormone (GH) genotypes of 45 male Zavot cattle were identified by PCR-RFLP. The effect of the bovine growth hormone gene on daily weight gain was estimated from a dataset obtained from cattle up to the age of 9 months. The mean differences of carcass weight or carcass yield among the genotype groups were assessed by analysis of covariance (ANCOVA). Two alleles for bovine growth hormone locus, L and V, were observed in Zavot cattle. The frequency of the L and V alleles was found to be 0.767 and 0.233, respectively. The genotype effect on live weight was not found to be significant (P > 0.05). The difference between the means of genotype groups was not found to be significant for carcass weight and carcass yield (P > 0.05). Further research on the association between bovine growth hormone gene polymorphism and yield traits in different cattle breeds should be conducted.