Genetic improvement of beef production efficiency and carcass quality is a key strategy to enhance national and international competitiveness and sustainability of beef production. However, the rate of genetic improvement using traditional phenotype and/or pedigree based genetic evaluation and selection has been slow for important beef performance traits that are difficult and expensive to measure such as feed efficiency. The project aims to create a user-friendly web-based portal and refined genomic tools to improve prediction accuracy in genetic selection for important beef performance traits. The project aims to accomplish this by generating increased genotype and phenotype data from multiple beef breeds followed by analysis. This consolidated data set provides a valuable reference to predict genomic expected progeny differences for feed efficiency and carcass traits which will allow producers to make informed genetic selection decisions to improve their herd. These tools will further promote the application of genomic tools in the beef industry, which will increase competitiveness of beef production and increase economic and environmental benefits such reduced greenhouse gas emissions for Alberta and Canada.
ActiveAgriculture & Agri-food
Climate Action Through Grazing (CAT-G)
Competition/Funding OpportunityGenome Canada - Climate-smart agriculture and food systems- interdisciplinary challenge teams
Project Lead(s)/Co-Lead(s)Carolyn Fitzsimmons (Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC)/University of Alberta) & James Cahill (University of Alberta)