Ground-breaking research being conducted in the Southern Multi-breed Project (SMB) by genetic researchers at the NSW Department of Primary industries is directly comparing the performance of the five temperate breeds of most impact in Southern Australia - Angus, Charolais, Hereford, Shorthorn and Wagyu.
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The Brahman breed has also been included at the Grafton site on the North Coast of NSW for its commercial relevance to that sub-tropical environment and provides linkage to the "Repronomics" project currently being conducted across Queensland and the Northern Territory and previous research from the former Beef CRC.
Dr Brad Walmsley, principal investigator and research scientist at the Animal Genetics and Breeding Unit in Armidale advocated for the SMB project saying that precision recording of economically valuable traits in conjunction with genomic selection, and the inclusion of DNA information in genetic evaluations, "has the potential to increase the rate of genetic improvement in beef cattle".
"This is also the case in any livestock species," Dr Walmsley said.
This is the first time we have been able to compare steers on-farm and in the feedlot from conception to slaughter in Southern Australia.
- Dr Brad Walmsley
To put a dollar value on genetic improvement in the beef industry through the use of selection index values, Brad said there has been an average increase in index value for profit of $4 per cow mated year-on-year and the highest performing herds are going at $7. A key objective of Meat and Livestock Australia's investment in genetics and genomics research such as SMB is to double this rate of genetic progress.
"We still have a long way to go in the beef industry," he said. "In the dairy world that increase in dollar index value currently equates to $20 per cow mated year-on-year."
The use of genomics is now commonplace in BREEDPLAN genetic evaluations with it first being introduced for estimating Brahman breeding values in 2017, and quickly after that in Hereford, Angus and Wagyu evaluations. More recently, Santa Gertrudis have included genomics with other breeds considering its use.
The SMB project being conducted in conjunction with Meat and Livestock Australia and scientists from the University of New England and differs from previous research in that all breeds are treated identically at each of the DPI research farms from birth, with the steers measured in the UNE Tullimba feedlot and their sisters recorded on-farm.
Previous research in the former Beef CRC, used weaned steers that were identically inducted onto research stations but that means their pre-weaning management may have been very different.
"The SMB project is the first time we have been able to compare steers from these five breeds on-farm and in the feedlot from conception to slaughter in southern Australia," Dr Walmsley said. "And for the females that work will be replicated from conception right through several breeding cycles."
This will generate the data to allow the development of across-breed EBVs, thus allowing the commercial industry to directly compare the genetics of the five breeds.
Beyond the "stock standard" BREEDPLAN traits there are new traits being explored for example, ultrasound ovarian scanning will be used to generate traits for heifer age at puberty and after first calving, identifying females that recycle quickly and successfully rebreed.
Other traits considered of high economic importance are being measured including feed efficiency, meat quality, cow body composition at mating, immune competence and horn/poll status.
Whereas once phenotype was the only tool available to attract a breeder's bidding attention, today the relevance of EBVs is more important than ever. The work being conducted in SMB is examining these new complex traits and their relationships with other traits and it is envisioned this will be the cornerstone of future-proofing selection indexes and profitability through genetics.
Dr Walmsley highlighted the fact that selection indexes use relationships between traits to better determine the outcome of selection.
Breeding for such traits is best practised through EBVs and selection indexes which are used to simultaneously select for a number of complex traits based on their influence of profitability. Selecting on just a single EBV could result in undesirable outcomes, for example, selecting better feed efficiency could result in poor marbling. The SMB project will provide estimates of the genetic relationships between traits allowing the breeder to select for both traits without one compromising the other.
"With more data we will get a better handle on the things that drive these traits and the relationships among them," he said.
The SMB work at Grafton involving Brahman, Angus and Hereford with some crossbreeding has produced some preliminary findings that are aligning well with research also conducted at Grafton in the 1960s-1980s.
Read more: Portable gene sequencing works at the crush.
