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the australian farmer
Six top trends in cattle genetics • Achieving sustainability and carbon neutrality goals. • Focusing on feed efficiency for
in innovative performance recording, modern database technology and cost effective genomic assessment 1 are welcome to contact us and learn more about what and how we have made these changes. In particular, they will be interested to learn about how cost effective our new approach has been. economic and environmental benefits • Accelerated genetic progress through artificial breeding technologies. • Precision breeding with digital twin technology. • Welfare-driven selection for polled genetics. • Leveraging artificial intelligence for genetic selection. Source: Beef 2024.
buyers and breeders alike. Furthermore, parent veri- fication will obviate any downstream lawsuits that can arise from unintended and unavoidable real-life management issues. While breed societies have existed in their own silos in the past, modern marketing specifications suggest commercial breeders would be better off choosing ani- mals with desirable traits for their circumstances rather than adhering to some fashionable breed. Of course stud breeders are still entirely necessary to provide seed stock to composite producers. For this reason a modern breed database would be optimal if it was multi-breed and avail- able to all beef producers to identify animals with traits and performance best suited to their local conditions. Genomic assessment too needs to become better and more cost effective for the breeder. Rather than maximising profits with the traditional charge per trait approach, we can now provide parent verification and set of traits (currently 42 and growing) for a single low cost test. We can do this because we have created ap- plication programming interface (API) links between our HerdLogic database and the highly innovative Diversity Arrays Technology laboratory that allows us to reduce administrative overheads. Furthermore, this lab provides us with exceptional analytical capabilities that promise to allow breeders to discover more relevant genes that are associated with specific traits as we see breeders record more phenotypic information. Stud breeders from all breeds, particularly small breeds that struggle to afford expensive breed society support services, as well as beef producers with interest
Dr. Alan Couch is President of the Australian Red Poll Cattle Breeders Inc . He obtained a PhD in Ecol- ogy from University of Canberra where he used in- novative genetic approaches to understand Murray Cod dispersal. He is keen to see the preservation of genetic diversity of heritage breeds in Australian agriculture.
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REF 1 : www.diversityarrays.com/dartreseq-finding-the-needle-in-the-genetic-haystack/
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