Ongoing Work

Continuing Study

Work in the area of color genetics continues at farms both large and small across the U.S. including various breeds and with various goals in mind. Although the alleles at the lighter part of the agouti spectrum are fairly well identified and understood, work continues to separate out darker pattern alleles that have often remained hidden until recently, now that the mechanics of agouti inheritance are better understood. Work is also continuing to better understand the spotting locus, trying to identify its behavior singly or doubled up in various breeds, some of which have traditionally looked to the spotting locus to provide for color variation within the fleece. Finally, work continues in identifying the impact of the B-locus on fleece color, including the protection that a single copy of B+ provides pigment for black production, and whether depth of moorit brown coloring can be predicted through the identification of another, as-yet unidentified locus.