BEEF seedstock producers are just six months away from having the ability to more accurately identify animals with superior genetics.
The Beef CRC yesterday announced that genomic predictions to help stud cattle breeders identify animals for superior carcase and beef quality, feed efficiency and female fertility traits, will be made available to BREEDPLAN by May next year.
The development is being hailed as one of the most significant milestones in beef breeding, with the potential to fast-track genetic gain at a pace only once imagined by researchers.
"This is one of the main outcomes of this CRC and we are on track to deliver these predictions, which have been validated in independent cattle populations," Beef CRC chief executive Dr Heather Burrow said.
"The research undertaken by the Beef CRC and its partners will deliver more detailed DNA information on Australian cattle breeds than has ever been achieved."
The new suite of genomic predictions will offer a range of benefits to producers across several scenarios.
For example, a cattle breeder who has a young weaner without any ultrasound scanning data but wants to predict the weaner's genetic merit for high marbling or beef tenderness, can have greater confidence when deciding whether to put the animal into a breeding program.
The breeder takes a hair sample from the animal and sends it off to their breed society, or directly to a genotyping laboratory. The laboratory genotypes the animal and sends the results to BREEDPLAN, where the genotypes are combined with other information such as pedigree and recorded measurements on the animal and its relatives.
Using a calibrated mathematical formula, a genomic prediction is made on the animal's genetic merit for all the BREEDPLAN traits.
The breeder will receive EBVs in exactly the same way as currently occurs, except the EBVs will have an improved accuracy due to the inclusion of the additional validated genomic information.
Dr Burrow said the genomic predictions would allow seedstock cattle breeders to more accurately identify animals that are genetically superior for carcase and beef quality, feed efficiency and female fertility traits such as age at puberty, first-calf re-breeding and lifetime reproductive performance in tropically adapted cattle breeds.
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