HOW USEFUL ARE GENETIC COLOUR TESTS?
Following a Zoom seminar on genetic colour testing by Kylie Munyard from Curtin University in Australia we decided to test a sample of our herd, writes Paul Hetherington, Beck Brow Alpacas. This article is an overview of the principles of the test and a summary of some of our results.
> Two genetically black males
I
am not a geneticist so I will start by apologising to all geneticists if I don’t use the exact terminology, but I will try and explain the theory and results in a way that makes sense to me and hopefully everyone reading this article.
Coat colour – the theory
There are two main types of genes that control colour; one that is denoted a or
16 Alpaca #87
A, which defines the base colour, and one denoted e or E which either allows or prevents the production of black pigment. An alpaca has two of each gene type so the possible options are aa aA AA and ee eE EE. Any of the three a/A options can exist with any of the three e/E options which gives a total of nine possible combinations. One of each pair of genes is passed on during the mating process. Continued on the next page >>
