‘Proceed with caution’, advise speakers

His biggest concern was the reduction in the generation gap offered by genomics, as bulls could have many, many more daughters before any problems might be found.

He gave the example of BLAD, discovered in 1990 and traced back to Osborndale Ivanhoe, who was born 38 years earlier. Researchers at the time suggested there were six generations born between Ivanhoe and the discovery of BLAD, and could be three to five times more with genomics.

He also argued speeding things up would worsen inbreeding, as it was all the sons of the same bloodlines being genomically tested.

Dr Mike Coffey, of SAC, dismissed Mr Scheepens out of hand, saying there had always been an element of risk since genetic work began.

Huub te Plate, of the USA semen company CRI, agreed risk management was required and acknowledge there was a tendency to overestimate genomic bulls, apparent when progeny testing results for those bulls became available.

‘Great benefits’

However, he argued the benefits were great, not just the reduced generation interval and quicker genetic gain, but the increased reliability. All the speakers on genomics agreed nothing was more reliable than a proven bull with daughters on the ground. But a young sire with genomic information could be up to 50 per cent more reliable than a young sire with only his PTA figures.

Mr te Plate said this 50 per cent increase was comparable to the huge leap made in 1994 when the net merit index was created to allow balanced breeding over single trait selection. Nothing else had brought such a massive benefit since progeny testing began in 1926 and herdmate comparisons in 1962. The advantages were for AI companies, as they could better select the bulls which took in for progeny testing, and for farmers who used young sires, as they could do with greater confidence.

Hugh Pocock, from Cogent, said he hoped genomics would encourage more people to use young sires, as then there would be more daughters on the ground sooner for progeny testing.

Mark Smith, from Genus ABS, voiced his support for genomics but, again, urged the industry to make sure it could walk before it ran. He said Genus would not yet use genomically selected bulls as sires of sires, sticking to proven bulls instead, and would like to see genomics applied to tackling the inbreeding problem, as currently 70 per cent of genomically tested bulls were sons of Shottle, Goldwyn and Oman.

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