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

能生育的乳肉牛和较低的犊牛死亡率对于盈利的牛肉生产系统至关重要。在雌性繁殖力和幼仔存活率方面，几乎没有遗传改良。该项目使用国家数据集来改善现有的生育特性，并开发一种新的小牛存活特性。这将使用记录用于行业数据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，而以前如果奶牛改变牛群或进入商业牛群，我们会丢失其产犊历史的一部分。基因组选择是一种新的育种工具，它提高了传统上难以提高的性状（如繁殖力和存活率）的遗传改良率。繁殖力和存活性状的基因组育种值将使用一步方法开发，并将提高改良率和牛肉生产的整体效率。这既有助于养活不断增长的人口，也有助于提高资源效率。为了提高认识，确保生育率和生存率被纳入育种目标，将开展广泛的知识交流计划。该项目具有创新性，因为牛肉基因组学仍处于起步阶段，目前还没有可用于遗传改良生存的育种工具。

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.