Capturing genetic gain in the beef industry

摘要

Meat and Livestock Australia (MLA) in conjunction with the Angus Society recently sponsored a two-day workshop for a number of seedstock producers, to review progress in the beef genetics industry and make some strategic decisions. The organisers hada few key issues which they wanted producers and scientists to think about and come up with some solutions. Why is there such a predominance of overseas genetics in some breeds, when the failure rate can be very high on commercial traits such as structure? If genetic principles are followed and theoretical genetic gains are calculated, the industry is not achieving the improvement expected. This is evident in various benchmarks such as the B3 index or the northern terminal index. Is it possible to increase genetic gain and what would the strategies be, and finally do breeders have the genetic literacy to do this?