Environment can play a major impact on the condition of livestock, but its impact on genetic variation within sheep is also under question.
University of New England honours student Dom Waters is three months into a nine month project investigating the extent genotypes can be impacted by environment interactions in high and low growth rate areas.
Using data from the Information Nucleus Flock and Resource Flock, Mr Waters modeled data on post-weaning weight (PWWT), intramuscular fat (IMF), scanned carcase fat (CCF) and carcase weight (CWT) from progeny of about 1400 rams.
His analyses found IMF was unchanged across the two environments while PWWT had intermediate sensitivity.
But it was CWT and CCF that were the most sensitive and saw significant re-ranking of rams.
Mr Waters said the data would be related to genomic composition in a bid to generate genomic breeding values on the topic.
"Obviously it's difficult for studs to breed for something like this using their own testing," he said.
"The most realistic ways is genome selection to breed for robustness and what that would look like is maybe you would get an EBV (estimated breeding value) for carcase weight and along with that you would get an EBV for how robust that ram is for carcase weight."
Mr Waters is the son of a shearer and has a grandfather who runs a superfine Merino flock at Guyra.
While he didn't grow up on the land himself, he was interested in genetics.
"The rams that perform best in a good environment aren't necessarily the same in bad environments," he said.
"If environments are expected to come more extreme and variable it is useful to understand the genetics of what makes some rams more robust and resilience."