AUSTRALIA could have one of the world’s most scientific sheep industry within weeks, when the fruits of six years' genetic research finally come to light.
On the table are new DNA or SNP-based (Singular Nucleotide Polymorphism) predictions of sheep breeding values for productivity and quality traits, which allow sheep seedstock producers to predict an animal's genetic merit without the need for extensive and time consuming progeny testing.
Emboldened by the success in the dairy industry, which has used SNP-based technology to transform its production capabilities throughout the United States, Australia, New Zealand and Europe, the Australian sheep industry has moved swiftly to integrate new DNA-based prediction with existing Australian Sheep Breeding Values (ASBVs).
The technology, which is expected to double the power of genetic improvement in most Australian sheep breeds, was able to be fast-tracked with the pooling of genetic data from Sheep Genetics, the Sheep Genomics research program and Sheep CRC’s Information Nucleus.
Across Australia, leading scientists have praised the technology and its potential for breeders targeting commercial markets.
“This is the next big thing,” said Meat and Livestock Australia (MLA) geneticist and southern Australian manager Dr Robert Banks.
“The research program is trialling a research chip, which assesses 50,000 SNPs – individual pieces of DNA - across the whole genome," Dr Banks said.
“It’s moving away from finding individual genes to identifying the effect of them all together.”
Dr Banks said while the SNP technology's greatest benefit for the dairy industry had been the ability to identify traits in cattle at a young age as opposed to maturity, in sheep it was having information on many more traits that would likely provide more benefit.
Traits such as omega-3 content of meat, staple length (which is currently expensive to measure), wool colour and photostability, and intramuscular fat could be identified with the new technology, he said.
“In principal people will be able to send off a DNA sample at weaning and make a decision on that animal a year early and have a lot more information on the potential of that animal,” he said.
While the science was yet to be used at a commercial scale, many shared the optimism.
“It's about faster delivery of more data on more traits for breeders,” said Sheep Genetics manager Sam Gill.
“For example, two important traits for Australian sheep industry are intramuscular fat and staple strength. We expect that breeding values for these traits can be predicted with about 50 per cent accuracy based on DNA analysis from a sample taken soon after birth,” Mr Gill said.
Sheep CRC chairman, Dr John Keniry said it represented world-best practice and put the Australian industry among the first to have access to these genetic tools.
The MLA and Australian Wool Innovation joint funded project's next stage will be seeking feedback from seedstock producers and sectors of wool and meat processing industry on what traits are of value.
“The next challenge is finding out what traits are important to people in the lamb and wool value chains, and whether they will pay for them,” Dr Banks said.
“For example, we think there might be markets that prefer and will pay for elevated targets of omega meat but we have to find that out.”
The current SNP test cost $200 per animal, but is expected to decrease when a commercial release is made.
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