Nutritional stimuli during the gestational period in dams have long-term effects on the offspring in terms of health and production rates. This study assessed the effect of fetal programming in 126 pregnant Nellore cows on reproductive and nutrigenetic traits of the progeny during the rearing phase. For that purpose, three nutritional treatments were used in these cows during pregnancy: PP – protein-energy supplementation in the final third, FP – protein-energy supplementation during the entire pregnancy, and NP – (control) only mineral supplementation. The male progeny (64 bulls) was evaluated for scrotal circumference and seminal traits at 12, 15, and 18 months of age. In addition, we performed a genomic association (35K SNPs) for scrotal circumference at 12 and 18 months of age. Only the total sperm defects showed significant difference between groups (P < 0.05), regardless of age, while major and minor sperm defects and vigor showed tendencies (P < 0.10). In the time analysis, only the minor sperm defects did not differ between ages, regardless of treatment (P = 0.92). We found genes that are associated with genetic variance at different ages and treatments (BTBD9, WNT2, ASZ1, WWOX and SLC26A8). Thus, prenatal protein-energy supplementation showed effects on the total of abnormal sperm cells between treatments, genotype-environment interaction, and some SNPs that explain more than 1% of the genetic variance on bulls during the rearing phase. These are evidences that different strategies of prenatal supplementation may have acted on epigenetic factors and may have caused changes in gene expression of animals. This contributes to the knowledge about mechanisms that involve fetal programming in beef cattle.

大坝妊娠期的营养刺激对后代的健康和生产率产生长期影响。这项研究评估了126头妊娠内罗尔奶牛的胎儿程序设计对饲养阶段后代的生殖和营养遗传特性的影响。为此目的，在怀孕期间对这些母牛使用了三种营养疗法：PP –在最后三分之一中补充蛋白质能量，FP –整个妊娠期间补充蛋白质能量，以及NP –（仅对照）矿物质补充。对雄性后代（64头公牛）在12、15和18个月大时的阴囊周长和精巢特征进行了评估。此外，我们对12和18个月大的阴囊周长进行了基因组关联（35K SNP）。P <0.05），无论年龄大小，而主要和次要精子的缺损和活力均表现出趋势（P <0.10）。在时间分析中，无论治疗如何，仅次要精子缺陷在年龄之间没有差异（P = 0.92）。我们发现了与不同年龄和处理方式（BTBD9，WNT2，ASZ1，WWOX和SLC26A8）的遗传变异相关的基因。因此，产前蛋白质能量补充对处理之间的异常精子细胞总数，基因型与环境之间的相互作用以及某些SNP产生了影响，这些SNP解释了饲养阶段公牛遗传变异的1％以上。这些证据表明，不同的产前补充策略可能已影响表观遗传因素，并可能导致动物基因表达发生变化。这有助于增加有关涉及肉牛胎儿编程的机制的知识。