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Beef producers profit from funding genetic research

June 02, 2005

GraserThumb.jpgBeef producers will continue to fund a genetic research project that has increased the profit of the Australian beef industry by more than $200 million over the past 20 years.

Dr Hans Graser, the Director of the Animal Genetics and Breeding Unit (AGBU) at The University of New England, which conducts the project, said the industry-based funding had been renewed till the end of the decade.

The project provides the genetic research and software development for BREEDPLAN, a commercial package of programs that gives breeders access to genetic evaluations of individual animals and strategies for breeding. In Australia, performance data on more than 2 million animals have been recorded for BREEDPLAN since its inception in 1984.

“The renewal of funding allows our beef group under the leadership of Dr David Johnston to continue our work supporting the Australian beef industry in its quest for improved profitability,” Dr Graser said. He explained that Meat & Livestock Australia (MLA) provided the funds from the producer levy for research and development together with a matching amount from the Commonwealth Government.

Dr Graser (pictured here) said the main aim of his Unit’s work on BREEDPLAN over the next five years was to assist breeders to increase the rate of genetic progress through improved analytical methods, the recording of novel traits, and a focus on advanced breeding programs. “Our first major objective is to include in the database and in the BREEDPLAN evaluation system an increasing amount of information obtained by the latest techniques in molecular genetics developed by the beef CRCs,” he said. “The second objective is to be able to evaluate animals of all major breeds on the same basis; this would allow valid comparisons of the genetic performance of any two animals from among those breeds. Another objective is to incorporate in breeding strategies the latest findings on environmental factors that affect reproduction.”

He said that breeding strategies were complicated by the differing requirements of production systems and markets: for example, the Japanese market’s interest in ‘marbled’ beef. By taking this into account, he continued, BREEDPLAN had helped to increase the rate of genetic improvement to more than $4 per breeder per year for Angus herds producing for the Japanese market.

AGBU, founded in 1976, is a joint venture between UNE and the NSW Department of Primary Industries. Dr Graser first came to AGBU in 1980 and has been involved with BREEDPLAN since its inception. While AGBU conducts research for the project and MLA provides funding support, the commercial aspects of BREEDPLAN are in the hands of the Agricultural Business Research Institute (ABRI), also based at UNE. “BREEDPLAN technology has been marketed to countries on all six continents, contributing significantly to ABRI’s bottom line,” Dr Graser said.

He pointed out that BREEDPLAN had also contributed significantly to the local economy, as its focus at UNE had prompted several of the major cattle breed societies to locate their headquarters in Armidale.


Media contact: Dr Hans Graser, AGBU, UNE (02) 6773 3332 or Jim Scanlan, Public Relations, UNE (02) 6773 3049.

Posted by Jim Scanlan at June 2, 2005 11:36 AM