The company is also re-evaluating its relationship with the beef research community as it develops greater independent capability to validate gene markers.

A division of Pfizer Animal Health, Catapult, took a body blow when the Australian beef industry’s SmartGene validation project decided several of the genetic markers used in GeneStar did not explain enough of the marbling and Net Feed Intake (NFI) traits to be useful in a marker-assisted estimated breeding value.

Nigel Evans, Pfizer’s vice-president, Animal Genetics, said Pfizer had been disappointed at the SmartGene finding.

The markers in question had been discovered and validated by CSIRO and separately validated by National Beef Cattle Validation Consortium in the United States.

However, Dr Evans said recent advances in genetic technology, reflected in a new marker panel capable of carrying 50,000 markers, have pushed the technology well beyond the current 12-marker GeneStar program.

In the second quarter of 2009, Catapult will release an updated system of 56 markers using a revised interface.

“We’ll be keeping the current traits, and there will be an increase in the number of markers for those traits,” Dr Evans said.

“But the bigger impact will be adding additional carcase yield traits to those we already have.”

“We’re working through a massive amount of data, but we’ll certainly be adding carcase yield traits, and more productivity traits.”

The star system will get confusing for 56 traits and beyond, so Pfizer is working on a new way to present the data to producers.