Click photo to enlarge
Angus cattle will be the first animals to have SNP Chip
gene technology late this year to improve selection for
traits. Photo by Neal Wallace.
A new genetic product, or SNP Chip, aimed at assisting
sheep breeders and Angus beef breeders with molecular breeding
values, has been launched in the United States and will be
available in New Zealand later this year.
The products are being commercialised by Pfizer Animal
Health.
Sharl Liebergreen, the company's technical service regional
manager, said the technology was leveraged off the bovine
genome sequencing, which allowed geneticists initially to use
50,000 DNA markers at once but would soon grow to 500,000
markers.
By comparison, the dairy industry was using 500,000 gene
markers.
Progress was a bit slower in sheep, with geneticists using
50,000 gene markers to determine molecular breeding values.
Mr Liebergreen told a Silver Fern Farms sheep and beef forum
in Gore that, by themselves, most of those markers had small
effects.
Cumulatively, those effects were large and influential,
allowing selection of animals for diverse values, such as
carcass weight, numbers of offspring born, survival or beef
tenderness.
The information for beef cattle has been extended to include
previously difficult-to-measure values such as average daily
weight gain, dry matter intake and net feed intake.
It will also enhance existing trait selection for calving
ease, birth and weaning weights, milking ability, carcass
weight, fat thickness, rib eye area and beef marbling.
Mr Liebergreen said the first gene tool was for Angus because
Australian and United States breeders had a massive amount of
phenotype information, but similar tools would soon be
available for other breeds as data was accumulated.
In sheep it was available for the main maternal sheep breeds
- Romney, Coopworth and Perendale - and would enhance
information on hard-to-measure traits of number of lambs born
and faecal egg counts, while enhancing information in weaning
and carcass weights.
A measure for lamb survival was not far away, he said.
Mr Liebergreen said it was made possible because of
sequencing of the sheep and bovine DNAs and scientific
collaboration between Sheep Improvement Ltd, Meat and Wool
New Zealand, Ovita and AgResearch.
Pfizer has bought Catapult from Ovita and has first refusal
on any sheep genomics technology developed by Ovita, jointly
owned by AgResearch and Agritech Investments Ltd, an
investment arm of Meat and Wool New Zealand.
"This wouldn't have occurred without sheep and beef levies
being paid to Meat and Wool New Zealand," he said.
Mr Liebergreen said Pfizer not only paid royalties to Ovita
for the technology, but also contributed $500,000 a year to
Ovita for research.
He described SNP Chips as a steep change in the quality of
information made available to breeders and their clients,
comparable to Sheep Improvement Ltd and the Central Progeny
Test, but he warned the speed of new technology was proving a
challenge, not only to scientists, but also farmers.
It would continue at this pace, he said, because scientists
now had access to the bovine and sheep genome sequencing.
AgResearch's manager of applied biotechnologies, Jimmy
Suttie, told the seminar New Zealand could no longer trade on
being the world's lowest-cost food producer, but had to play
to its advantages and use new technology to provide food
markets wanted.
"New Zealand's point of difference is how we develop and
adapt technology," he said.
No single technology would drive productivity gains.
Farmers needed to adapt several technologies to achieve that,
he said.
But New Zealand farmers had to achieve those gains from a
declining pastoral area and reverse a trend of increasing the
number of stock units per hectare, which he warned could not
continue indefinitely.
Dr Suttie gave an insight into some of those new
technologies, including fungal endophytes that live in grass
and confer pest resistance, but without neurotoxic disease in
animals.
This could boost milk production 10% to 15% and liveweight
gains 10%, providing a financial benefit of $225 a hectare.
Other equally significant productivity gains would come from
genetic technology assisting breeders.
