21 December 2009
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 The Australian beef industry could take a leaf out of the book of dairy producers by establishing a model which would see producers across the globe share DNA information on their cattle.
That’s according to an Australian-born genetic extension specialist from the University of California, Dr Alison Van Eenennaam.
In Australia on a period of sabbatical leave, Dr Van Eenennaam said all beef breeds and countries should harmonize their genetic evaluation systems as currently occurs within the dairy industry.
“Pooling the evaluations from different countries into an international bull evaluation resource allows dairy producers to compare sires in Norway to sires in Australia,” Dr Van Eenennaam said.
“All countries participate because the dairy industry in each country benefits.”
She said the fragmented way that the beef industry in the United States collects and evaluates genetic data is not an optimal model for national beef cattle genetic evaluation.
“The beef guys are very much on their own in the USA, while the dairy industry has a USDA-funded group in Maryland that does all their genetic evaluations,” Dr Van Eenannaam said.
“This puts dairy in a more powerful position to get genomic data integrated into their genetic proofs whereas I think the beef industry is struggling to get that done.”
Dr Van Eenannaam said it is necessary to know how much of the genetic variation of a trait is associated with marker tests. This requires information on the performance of DNA tests in
independent populations of cattle.
But she added that both Australia and the US have a limited number of such populations that can be used for this independent assessment.
“The hard task of independently validating DNA tests has been compounded by the fact that scientists and commercial genomics companies such as Pfizer Animal Genetics and Merial are continuously discovering multiple DNA markers associated with an ever-increasing number of traits,” Dr Van Eenennaam said.
“It is difficult to find genotyped populations of beef cattle that have data on these different traits, and it is an expensive proposition to develop such populations. That’s why pooling data from beef cattle populations developed in different countries offers an opportunity to achieve this goal.”
Beef CRC CEO Dr Heather Burrow said that is why the Beef CRC initiated collaborations with research organisations in the USA and Canada, so it could in effect treble the size of its experiments, greatly reduce the time taken to deliver its results to industry (relative to Beef CRC operating alone) and most importantly, to greatly increase the confidence that it and industry would have in the value of the markers for industry use.
“Each country involved in the collaboration has undertaken genome-wide association studies using the 50,000 SNP panel on 1000 animals for carcase and meat quality traits and feed efficiency in steers and for reproductive performance in females,” Dr Burrow said.
“Results from these experiments have been shared and a process of validating the significant DNA markers in these populations is now underway, prior to public release of the results in 2010,” she said.
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For further information contact Margaret Puls, Acting Communications Manager, Beef CRC, 0419 578 356
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