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Cattle: Breeding goals, interaction between breeding management, genetic parameters and crossbreeding


The team’s focus areas are 

  1. Determination of breeding goals for the different species,
  2. Estimation of the effect of different management initiatives at breeding level in the individual herd, and
  3. Calculation of genetic parameters for economically important traits, among others the estimation of genotype by environment interactions and heterosis effects.

The team’s work areas interact with the work of the other teams – especially the Cattle phenomics team and the three teams working with population genetics.

Determining the breeding goals is the first step to be accomplished when preparing a breeding plan. If one does not know which way to go, there is no need to go fast. We are working with the determination of breeding plans based on economic models, among others SimHerd, as well as determination based on user preferences.

Many breeding initiatives in a cattle herd are of great significance for the financial result of the herd, and they should therefore be considered as management decisions in the medium term. The level of breeding in a herd is put together by the breeding progress coming via the progress of the population. In addition to this comes the initiatives that can be performed in the individual herd. In cattle farming it is the use of systematic crossbreeding systems, the use of gender-sorted semen and beef cattle semen, and the use of genomic breeding values for the selection of the females to be dams for the next generation of production animals. The use of cross breeding is particularly interesting, since it has not been significantly applied earlier.

G*E interactions are very important, because there is substantial evidence that the same genotypes do not work the same way in different environments. Realising this would improve the breeding work that takes place at herd level.

Projects

  • SOBcows
  • Reffico

Team coordinator

Morten Kargo

Senior Researcher Center for Quantitative Genetics and Genomics

Members