August 17, 2020

Australia enhances dairy genetics portal

DataGene has released its August's Australian Breeding Values (ABV) into DataVat, a website that provides highly accessible genetic information to Australian dairy farmers, Dairy News Australia reported.

DataVat's Animal Search function allows the user to look up genetic details of individual bulls or cows, including ABVs, indices, genetic codes, pedigree, progeny and indices graphs. Filters allow the user to create and sort lists of animals that meet their breeding priorities.

With each ABV release, DataVat taps on a database of more than 830,250 bulls from around the world.

DataGene chief executive officer Matt Shaffer said further improvements would gradually add more functionality to DataVat.

"We are now at the stage of expanding data connections to create richer tools and resources," Dr. Shaffer said.

DataVat serves as a window to the dairy industry's Central Data Repository, which connects data from a variety of sources, such as the genetic evaluation system, breed societies, herd test centres and on-farm software.

Started and funded by Dairy Australia, DataGene is also a partner in the International Dairy Data Exchange (iDDEN), which is working to streamline data exchange among dairy herds, milk recording organisations, dairy equipment manufacturers and other dairy organisations across 13 countries.

Dr. Shaffer stressed that iDDEN "is founded on strong principles of data governance and consent for data sharing."

"These issues will be of growing importance as the volume of data available on-farm increases and systems move to cloud-based solutions."