March 29, 2012
Pfizer, US Brahman association introduce tenderness GE-EPD
The new genomic-enhanced expected progeny difference (GE-EPD) for tenderness released by the American Brahman Breeders Association (ABBA) incorporates DNA information from GeneSTAR® and Pfizer Animal Health, which boost accuracy by up to 10%.
In addition to its increased accuracy, GeneSTAR also enabled more animals to have EPDs computed for tenderness, which is especially difficult and expensive to measure.
Brahman breeders were among the early adopters of GeneSTAR, which helped ABBA to incorporate this information into their genetic evaluation for the calculation of GE-EPDs, says Chris Shivers, executive vice president of ABBA.
GeneSTAR, a targeted panel of DNA markers, provides producers with genomic information about key production traits in all breeds of beef cattle. In addition to tenderness, results include molecular value predictions (MVPs®) for feed efficiency, marbling and a palatability index. The reports also include percentile ranks, which are determined by benchmarking each animal against hundreds of its breed contemporaries in the Pfizer Animal Health database.
Mr Shivers says these new GE-EPDs with increased accuracy for tenderness can help streamline the genetic evaluation process when making breeding decisions. The improved tenderness in young breeding stock will increase the marketability of the Brahman breed. It is also useful with animals in the pedigrees without progeny that have gone through ABBA's carcass evaluation programme.
