Dr Paul Crosson

Beef Enterprise Leader, Teagasc Grange

Dr. Paul Crosson is a Principal Research Scientist with Teagasc and Beef Enterprise Leader at the Animal & Grassland Research and Innovation Centre, Grange.

His research work involves the economic and environmental assessment of beef cattle systems. He has collaborated with Bord Bia (the Irish Food Board) in the development of a national-scale farm carbon audit initiative. He was on industry technical working groups established by the Irish Cattle Breeding Federation which led to reviews of the beef breeding indexes used in Ireland.

He was an expert contributor to Technical Working Groups of the Sustainable Agriculture initiative (SAI) Platform – a global food industry initiative and is a member of the Animal Feeds Technical Advisory Group of the UN FAO LEAP Partnership. He is past-president of the Irish Grassland Association and Editor of the international Elsevier scientific journal Agricultural Systems.

Overview of updates & modifications to the Irish suckler beef breeding indexes

Summary

• Breeding indexes are tools,which provide an expected profit value for the progeny of breeding animals by combiningindividual animal estimates of genetic merit transmitting abilitiesfor a range of performance traits, each weighted by their respective economic importance.
• Irish cattle receive two index values each: 1) a Terminal Index to help identify candidate parents to generate calves for meat production, and 2) a Replacement Index to help identify candidate parents to generate the next generation of replacement heifers for entering the suckler herd.
• Both breeding indexes were recently updated to include new traits (e.g., age at finish, tuberculosis resistance),revisedeconomic weights (to
  reflect changes inpricesand costs of production) and trait-specific weights to reflect their carbon cost. In addition, a new method to evaluate calving difficulty, called a single step genomic evaluation has also been implemented.
• The updates to the Terminal Indexesaims to reducecosts of finishing cattle by reducing feed consumption and finishing age, while increasing the focus on carcass value.
• The updates to the Replacement Index aims to reduce the cost of suckler cows by reducing feed costs, predominantly by selecting for smaller cows and increasing fertility, while concurrently emphasising the importance of generating ‘quality’ and profitable progeny.

Download the full paper: An overview of updates to the Irish suckler beef breeding indexes

Download the presentation: Paul Crosson – Overview of updates & modifications to the Irish suckler beef breeding indexes – Presentation