Pathway for genetic improvement of Australian beef and sheep by using sustainability indexes to address greenhouse-gas emissions: workshop report

Abstract

The Australian beef and sheep industries can play a small but important role in helping achieve global emissions targets. Genetic selection of cattle and sheep that emit less methane is an opportunity to make permanent and cumulative change and breeders are demonstrating growing interest for methane breeding values. However, the number and complexity of methane traits is causing confusion at the commercial level and needs clear communication guidelines. Clear guidance on which trait or traits should be adopted by industry is needed. The current selection index software (BreedObject and SheepObject) used by industry already has the functionality to select for methane predicted from other traits already included in the index, and once genomic breeding values for methane are available, they too can be included. For breeding values of measured methane to be published with a suitable prediction accuracy, large-scale phenotyping is required, and there are several ongoing projects within Australia that will help achieve that goal. This can be achieved sooner and with higher accuracies if phenotyping methods are improved for scalability for recording on commercial properties. International collaboration and alternative funding sources are likely to be the fastest path to achieving the rapid increase in phenotyping required to improve prediction accuracy and estimate currently unknown genetic correlations. This paper includes outcomes from a stakeholder workshop, detailing the philosophy for why methane should be selected for and the different methods that could be envisaged to reduce methane by genetic selection, the industry demands, the various methane trait definitions, a review of the fundamental research already completed, the tools already developed for implementing methane in selection indexes, ongoing Australian projects for large scale methane phenotyping, and the recommendations for the path forward to sustainability indexes in Australian beef and sheep.