The Saskatchewan government has matched a contribution from Alberta to fund a genomics research project.
The Canadian Simmental Association is leading the project to identify genes that will improve carcass quality and efficiency. All breeds will benefit from the results.
Agriculture minister Bob Bjornerud said the province’s $375,000 contribution from the Agriculture Development Fund will help beef producers stay competitive.
Rick McIntyre, past president of the CSA, said the project has been in the works for years.
The Churchbridge, Sask., producer said the three-year $1 million project will help select traits that are hard to select for, such as feed efficiency.
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“Through the data we have built and the data that’s going to be gathered through this project, they’re going to identify animals through DNA snips that have the genes that we want to select for,” McIntyre said.
Producers should be able to identify animals with specific genes earlier than usual simply by taking hair from young animals.
“We’ll be able to select before we normally would know they had that gene,” he said. “We would have (otherwise) gone through a good four-year process.”
Feed efficiency is one of the traits McIntyre expects will make an economic difference for producers.
“That’s a very hard thing to measure in the cattle industry,” he said.
“It’s easy in other industries that we compete against.”
The CSA also contributed money to the project from its Garth Sweet Simmental Foundation.
