Beef producers have questioned how useful data from the $7.3 million Southern Multi Breed project will be after it was revealed the six breed associations involved will determine how the information is released.
The first drop of calves have just been weaned in the Southern Multi Breed project which is a five-year collaborative research and development (R&D) project co-funded by NSW Department of Primary Industries, UNE, Meat and Livestock Australia and the commonwealth government.
While data collection is still in its early days, up to 2000 calves will be born each year at five DPI research stations across NSW.
Angus, Charolais, Brahman, Shorthorn, Hereford and Wagyu cattle will be used to improve the recording of new and hard-to-measure traits and help develop a multi-breed genetic evaluation.
At the North West Beef Producers Forum in Tamworth, breeders in attendance asked what say participating societies would have in halting the publication of results, especially if they were degrading towards a particular breed.
A NSW DPI spokesperson told The Land the project data would be made available for use in Breedplan evaluations at the discretion of the relevant breed associations.
Many of the breed societies involved stated they had no direct involvement in the project, but would utilise the data for the benefit of the breeders who had contributed.
Australia's biggest breed society, Angus Australia, has indicated it will accept relevant data from the project to be included within-breed Trans-Tasman Angus Cattle Evaluation (TACE).
But Angus Australia chief executive officer Peter Parnell said they believed it was unlikely an effective multi-breed evaluation would be available for at least several years.
Future adoption of multi-breed genetic evaluation would be possible if there was evidence it offered equivalent or better results for members compared to the current single-breed analysis, he said.
"Angus Australia has a policy that it will only contribute resources and/or participate in R&D aimed at achieving multi-breed genetic evaluation if it is shown that it will enhance the accuracy of estimated breeding values of animals recorded with Angus Australia, and thereby the predicted future rate of genetic improvement in the Angus breed," he said.
"In addition, Angus Australia believes that any commercialisation pipeline associated with multi-breed evaluation should not compromise the society's role in providing genetic evaluation services to Angus and Angus-influenced cattle; or compromise the control, security and recognition of data collected by Angus Australia members over many decades.
"Further, involvement in multi-breed evaluation should not compromise the society's ability to participate in other genetic evaluations where Australian cattle are benchmarked with the global Angus gene pool.
"Unfortunately, no clarity exists from NSW DPI or MLA regarding their intentions on the future role of breed associations in multi-breed evaluation."
Australian Brahman Breeders' Association general manager Anastasia Fanning said their association would need to make an informed decision on the use of this data as it became available.
"When we have a true understanding of how the data correlates with the information gathered from the other breeds, further discussion will be had with the board and our members," she said.
It was a similar response from the Shorthorn Beef Society, which already turned to the overseas IGS database to access a multi-breed system faster.
"We believe in multi-breed genetic evaluation. We are passionate about supporting the Australian beef industry to achieve better outcomes," technical director Sam Martin said.
The Australian Wagyu Association had not been approached to make the data available but it expected it would be used in AWA Breedplan.
Charolais Society of Australia intends to use the data in monthly Breedplan analysis while Herefords Australia was also supportive and understood the data would also overlay the collection of DNA samples and improve EBV accuracy.
The project's main priority is building datasets that enable the development of multi-breed Breedplan evaluations so producers can select bulls irrespective of breed type.
The DPI spokesperson said there was separate work currently underway to develop collaborative models that would allow such tools to be delivered.
MLA program manager for genetics, Hamish Chandler, said there were three main areas needed to deliver a multi-breed evaluation; the technical capability of Breedplan software, datasets that provide linkage between breeds, and agreement between stakeholders to enable datasets to be combined for analysis.
"The technical capability of the analytical software is mostly complete and available, with some additional work still being done to allow the use of genomic information from multiple breeds," he said.
"The Southern Multi-breed project aims to address the need for datasets to compare between breeds used in southern production systems. Similar work is already underway for tropical breeds with projects such as Repronomics that have been very successful.
"To address the third aspect, we are separately working with all stakeholders including breed societies to find delivery models that can be used for delivering multi-breed Breedplan analyses."
Delivering a multi-breed Breedplan to beef producers would require a similar approach to that used in the sheep industry; the combination of this data with other datasets, including information recorded by producers running multiple breeds side by side or recording data on crossbred and composite animals.
Breedplan is a genetic evaluation system from the Agricultural Business Research Institute (ABRI).
ABRI Genetics Research and Development manager Dr Brad Crook said it was anticipated the data would be stored on a single database, which would be linked to individual breed society databases using ABRI's cross-referencing software.
"The processes by which the data will enter the Breedplan pipeline and the breeds for which this will occur are still matters under discussion," he said.
"In the short term, the breed-specific component of the SMB data could be used directly in the Breedplan evaluation for that breed.
"Likewise, the complete multibreed data could be used in the Breedplan evaluation conducted for each breed assuming the evaluation is configured appropriately for that approach.
"It all depends on the sort of evaluation each breed is looking to access.
"The bigger goal, of course, is to use the SMB data as the linchpin for a combined genetic evaluation of the breeds represented in the project, bringing together each breed's own pedigree, performance, and genomic data into a single SMB Breedplan evaluation."
He said a single SMB Breedplan evaluation wouldn't automatically replace other Breedplan evaluations involving the participating breeds.
"From an ABRI perspective, we'd be looking to provide whatever commercial services are required to allow our clients and the wider bull-buying industry to make the best use of the information available," he said.
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Lucy Kinbacher
Raised on a cattle property at Biggenden, Lucy Kinbacher has spent 10 years working across metropolitan, regional and rural publications in both Queensland and NSW. Lucy has been the editor of the Queensland Country Life and North Queensland Register since 2021.
Raised on a cattle property at Biggenden, Lucy Kinbacher has spent 10 years working across metropolitan, regional and rural publications in both Queensland and NSW. Lucy has been the editor of the Queensland Country Life and North Queensland Register since 2021.
