ABRI provides the BREEDPLAN® genetic evaluation service to both Australian and international clients, and so represents the most widely used genetic evaluation service for beef cattle internationally. Approximately 63 separate BREEDPLAN evaluations have been developed, representing over 40 million animals, almost 40 beef cattle breeds and at least 100 breed associations distributed across 14 countries. This paper provides an overview of current initiatives and developments being undertaken by ABRI regarding multi-country and multi-breed BREEDPLAN evaluations.

The first multi-country multi-trait single-step GBLUP (ssGBLUP) BREEDPLAN analysis was released for the Hereford breed in October 2017, combining the pedigree, performance and genomic data from Australia, New Zealand and Namibia. Nearly 18 months later, Hereford breeders have embraced genotyping with a 3.8-fold increase in number of animals genotyped. The inclusion of genomic information has influenced the Estimated Breeding Values (EBVs), although this varies by trait and animal. Similarly, exclusion of hard-to-measure phenotypes from the analysis confirms the importance of recording phenotypes for the estimation of accurate EBVs, even when utilising ssGBLUP. The collection of both genotypes and phenotypes, particularly for hard-to-measure traits, remains vital in allowing beef producers to best utilise ssGBLUP.

A study was conducted to compare mature cow weight in the South African Simmental population when defined as the weight of the cow at calving or the weight of the cow at weaning of the calf. Data included in the analysis were 14458 records for cow weight at calving (CWT-C) representing 6534 cows and 18871 records for cow weight at weaning (CWT-W) representing 8395 cows. All cows were born between 1968 and 1996, while all calves were born between 1977 and 1998. The following effects had a significant influence on the traits and were included in the genetic analysis: Cow age in years fitted as a covariate term (linear and quadratic) and contemporary group fitted as a fixed effect. Contemporary group was defined as the unique combination of herd, birth year of calf, month of weighing, breeder-defined management group code for the calf and supplementary feeding code for the cow (for CWT-W). All analyses were done using ASREML, first fitting uni-trait and then bi-variate animal models that made provision for up to four weights per cow. The estimated genetic correlation obtained between the two cow weight traits was 0.95 ± 0.03, with a residual correlation of 0.61 ± 0.02. The heritability estimates for CWT-C and CWT-W from this analysis were 0.29 ± 0.04 and 0.37 ± 0.04, respectively. From a breeding perspective, these results confirm that little benefit is to be gained from weighing cows at calving if cows are to be weighed at weaning. If cow weights are to be recorded for an indication of cow maintenance costs, then weight at weaning is the more reliable and practical measure to record.

Genetic evaluation for beef cattle in Australia has been performed using an animal model with best linear unbiased prediction since 1984. The evaluation procedures have evolved from simple to more complex models and from few to a large number of traits, including traits for reproduction, growth and carcass characteristics. This paper describes in detail the current beef cattle genetic evaluation system ‘BREEDPLAN’ used for the Australian beef cattle industry, the traits analysed and underlying models, and presents a short overview of the challenges and planned developments of coming years.