15AGRITECHCAT4: Improving female fertility and calf survival in the UK beef industry

肥沃的哺乳肉牛和低死亡率是有利可图的牛肉生产系统的关键。对雌性受精率或幼崽存活率而言，基因方面的改善微乎其微。该项目使用国家数据集来改进现有的受精性性状，并开发一种新的小牛存活性状。这将使用为行业数据记录的出生和死亡日期来完成，这意味着每头奶牛都有一套完整的产犊记录，以前如果一头奶牛改变了牛群或进入商业牛群，我们就会丢失她的产犊历史的一部分。基因组选择是一种新的育种工具，它可以提高传统上难以改善的性状的遗传改良率，如繁殖力和存活率。育性和存活率的基因组育种值将使用一步法来开发，并将提高改良的效率和牛肉生产的整体效率。这将有助于养活不断增长的人口，并提高资源效率。为了提高认识并确保生育和生存被纳入繁殖目标，将有一个广泛的知识交流方案。这个项目是创新的，因为牛肉基因组学仍处于初级阶段，目前还没有遗传工具来提高存活率。

Fertile suckler beef cows and low calf mortality are essential for profitable beef production systems. Little geneticimprovement has been made for female fertility or calf survival. This project uses national data sets to improve existingfertility traits and develop a new calf survival trait. This will be done using dates of birth and death that are recorded forindustry data and will mean a complete set of calvings being available for each cow, where previously if a cow changedherd or went to a commercial herd we lost part of her calving history. Genomic selection is a novel breeding tool whichincreases the rate of genetic improvement for traits that have traditionally been difficult to improve, like fertility and survival.Genomic breeding values for fertility and survival traits will be developed using single step methodology and will increaserates of improvement, and the overall efficiency of beef production. This will both help to feed the rising population andincrease resource efficiency. To raise awareness and ensure fertility and survival are included in the breeding goal therewill be an extensive knowledge exchange programme. This project is innovative as beef genomics is still in its infancy andthere are currently no breeding tools available for the genetic improvement of survival.