PFIZER Animal Genetics has struck an important commercial alliance with a prominent Queensland Angus seedstock producer designed to highlight the value of the company's new high-density gene marker test.
The Angus HD50K test released in April scrutinises a panel of 50,000 gene markers for 13 traits of economic importance to the cattle industry.
Pfizer Animal Genetics' head of business for the Asia Pacific region, Dr Gerard Davis, said his company had entered into a partnership with Raff Angus, a 500-cow Black Angus seedstock business operated by David and Andrew Raff and family on Queensland's Darling Downs.
"Pfizer's partnership with Raff Angus will allow it to work closely with a large, elite, well-recorded Angus seedstock herd to gather a lot of information about the performance of the new DNA technology," Dr Davis told an audience during the Brisbane Show.
"Not only will the association be mutually beneficial to the Raffs and our company, but also for clients buying Raff bulls, who will have access to an extensive amount of information that was not previously available.
"Essentially, what this program will allow is to say, if you want to maximise the rate of genetic progress, this is how you can do it by utilising the HD50 panel for Angus."
He said the Raff family had a history of being groundbreakers in genetic improvement in the Angus breed, and the Australian seedstock industry generally.
"Over the next few years, the industry will hear a lot about outcomes from this partnership - not only about the 50K product, but also the benefits it is bringing to the beef industry generally," Dr Davis said.
A number of traits assessed through the HD50K test are available in Breedplan, in which case they will be integrated and presented as marker-assisted EBVs. In addition there are other traits including tenderness, dry matter intake, net feed efficiency and average daily gain which are not currently available as Breedplan traits.
Other traits not yet available among the 13 reported under the HD50K test will be scrutinised within the Raff herd. Examples will include heat and tick tolerance, and respiratory disease resistance.
David Raff said the point that excited him most about the HD50K technology was that it took the human element and environmental influences out of the performance recording assessment equation.
"Most importantly, this technology is based on the individual animal - not on estimates or assumptions which are influenced by parent calculations. We're going to be able to know so much about each individual animal's likely performance, at just a few months of age.
"It still has a way to go, to be sure, but we're proud to be getting in on the ground-floor. The industry should be extremely grateful when a large multinational is prepared to invest so much R&D money into our industry, as Pfizer has done."
A large proportion of the Raff herd will be tested upfront, including sale bulls and females, in what will be the largest within-herd DNA examination yet conducted in Australia for a purebred registered herd, using the 50K panel.
"As a result we believe we are going to be a generation or two ahead of our competitors, within three years," Mr Raff said.
"But the biggest issue for us is in making the test results commercially acceptable, so our clients can utilise this technology.
"The ultimate benefit will be at the commercial level, and a big part of this project will hinge around educating clients about the benefits to be gained through DNA-based selection pressure."
The dairy industry was a classic case of driving the uptake of DNA technology, Mr Raff said. A recent report suggested the industry was currently fast-tracking its genetic gain by two to three years, per year, through genetic testing.
Following the April launch of Pfizer's HD50K marker panel, first results have been released to clients during the past six weeks.
"Since the alignment of 50K Molecular Value Predictions with Australian information using high-use Australian sires, that information is starting to roll-out commercially to breeders, which has sparked a solid response in uptake of the test," Dr Davis said.
"To put it into some context, the volume of testing being done in the early post-release stages in Australia is well in excess of the activity seen in the US in the equivalent post-launch period," he said.
"There are probably two main reasons for that: the first is to depth of Pfizer's relationship with the Angus breed in Australia, and the second is the clear pathway that now exists to incorporate results with Breedplan data."
While Pfizer had chosen Black Angus as the product's initial entry-point because of the breed's heavy emphasis on Breedplan recording, other research is focussing on developing similar products for other Bos Taurus breeds. Other Taurus breeds could have first access to a HD marker panel before year's end, indications suggest. A second R&D program on Indicus types is still in earlier states of development, perhaps 12 months behind.
Asked what the prospect was of Pfizer being able to incorporate the new Beef CRC polledness gene marker for Bos Indicus into its broader genetic test, Dr Davis said his company was "looking forward to the technology being made available to sell to our customers, as part of a broader test, if there is a demand for it".
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