According to Professor Jennie Pryce, genomic selection is “a really exciting technology” used to improve the health, fertility and economic viability of dairy cows.
“We look for associations between genetic markers in DNA and traits that are important for not only productivity but animal well-being and environmental impact,” she said.
Genomic selection can be used by scientists to "develop a prediction equation that can then be applied to animals we extract DNA from at birth and then we can tell how well they are going to perform when they become lactating cows”.
Ms Pryce said gene technology has allowed farmers to bread cows with greater heat tolerance and that are more feed efficient.
