Purpose |
Genetic improvement of beef cattle is a process that has been occurring for many years. However, in recent years use of genetic resources to improve reproduction, growth and efficiency, and carcass characteristics has reached a much greater importance in the beef cattle industry. The genetic improvement of beef cattle is a very complex issue for many reasons. Beef cattle produce high quality protein and other nutrients for human consumption. However, beef cattle produce this food by utilization of land and forage that is typically unavailable for use in direct human food production. These lands and forages occur in highly variable environments, requiring cows with different genetic potentials for optimum production. Adding complexity to the problem of genetic improvement is a high degree of segmentation of the industry from the seedstock producer to the consumer of nutritious and tasty meat. The myriad of potential owners of an animal during its life compete with one another and do not all place value on the same traits. This leads to confusion in the communication from the consumer to the seedstock producer on what basis (traits) to elevate the superiority of animals. Progress is being made in solving many of these problems, including development of new ways of evaluating reproduction (i.e. stayability EPD), DNA mapping, marker assisted selection (MAS), and identification of genes at loci that directly affect quantitative traits (QTL's). The purpose of this committee is to develop improved methods of genetic improvement, to disseminate new information, and educate the industry on genetic improvement methodologies.
Committee Members |
(Something introducing the committe and its members).
| Dr. Mark Enns | Dr. Ronnie D. Green | Dr. David W. Schafer |
| Dr. Brent Buckley | Dr. Don D. Kress | Dr. Michael MacNiel |
| Dr. Milton Thomas | Dr. Andy D. Herring | Dr. Charles T. Gaskins |
| Dr. William C. Russell | Dr. Robert Kemp | Dr. Warren Snelling |
| Dr. John A. Winder | Dr. R. Garth Sasser | Dr. Richard Frahm |
Committee History |
Current Objectives |
Expected Outcomes |
Development of a WWW site (objective 1) will result in producers who are more informed and able to use the latest tools for genetic improvement. Details of this effort are discussed in the Education Plan section. Part of the educational effort will be to help producers to understand the effects of crossbreeding and to plan crossbreeding systems (objective 2). This will be accomplished with a simulation program that producers can obtain from the WWW site. With this tool, producers can select breeds from a table and examine alternative corssbreeding systems.
Interest in the use of genetics is at an all time high in the beef cattle industry. Expected Progeny Differences (EPD's) are being widely used in merchandizing seed stock animals to both seedstock and commercial producers. Producers are using DNA technology in which homozygosity for the polled condition and black color condition can be determined. These are dominant conditions in which the heterozygote carrier of the recessive condition is not visually discernable from the dominant homozygote. technologies such as this will make other DNA technologies more acceptable to producers. The efforts of the committee in maintaining records on tissue stored for DNA analysis (objective 3) will help in the development of markers for quantitative traits and potentially find QTLs that can be used to increase selection efficiency and speed genetic improvement.
A large number of breeds with varying genetic potentials is available for use by the industry. Producers are interested in how these breeds compare for different traits and how breeds adapt to different environmental conditions. Work done and/or disseminated by the committee will help to clarify these questions. Producers are also interested in crossbreeding for commercial beef production. Knowledge of crossbreeding systems and development of composite breeds is provided in the "Crossbreeding Bulletin" and will be of great value to producers.
The final measure of success in beef production is a nutritious, tender, and favorable product. Because of the importance of these traits, many breed associations are publishing EPD's for carcass traits. These are and will be used more fully by producers in the future. Two problems arise because of this. First, all traits are genetically related and some of these relationships are not positive in terms of making genetic improvement. For exapmle, in Hampshire swine selection for decreased back fat and greater leanness resulted in reduced reproductive performance. Secondly, a question arises as to how to select for multiple traits simultaneously. The plan for objective 4 is to conduct 2 or 3 day workshops for seedstock producers to help them learn about how to use genetic tools to make the greatest use of the genetic potential of animals. These workshops would start with a discussion of basic genetic principles, continue with how these principles relate to methods of genetic improvement, and conclude with a detailed discussion of practical methods for genetic improvement. Workshops are tentatively being planned at 2 or 3 locations, and at times during the year when it will be most convenient for producers who need the informantion.
Exchange of information (objective 5) will result in committee members who are knowledgeable of what other members are doing and will facilitate cooperative efforts in research. The annual meeting will be used for detailed planning of the genetic improvement workshops and for conducting a mini-symposium on the relationships between reproduction and carcass traits and how breeding programs might be designed to utilize these relationships.
Education Materials |
DNA Repository |
LINKS |
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