Livestock breeding is set for a revolution with technology that can tell the quality of a bull based on its DNA, says Livestock Improvement.
"It is seen by many as the Holy Grail for livestock breeding," chairman Stuart Bay said at the company's annual meeting in Hamilton yesterday.
The company is developing a process called genomic selection, which picks bulls based on their DNA profile rather than the qualities of the milk produced by their daughters. The conventional method of proving the quality of a bull is to mate the animal with a select number of cows. The daughters are later tested when they come into milk, which can take years.
Genomic selection will be used in combination with conventional testing methods.
"The crux of it is that we can identify better bulls earlier in their life than we currently can and then we can make them more widely available to New Zealand farmers," said Bay.
There was a significant cost in DNA profiling but the outcome would provide greater benefit to farmers, he said. A farmer could expect the current selection system to return an increase of 1.3 per cent in milk production from a cow in a year.
"We would expect that amount to lift at least another 50 per cent," Bay said.
The genomic selection would be first aimed at dairy farmers but could later be developed for other animals.
The potential of genomic selection put the livestock industry on the verge of a biggest revolution since the development of artificial breeding in the 1950s, Bay said. Livestock Improvement invested in research for more than 10 years with the aim of improving the genetic merit of bulls by selecting superior DNA.
