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SCOTLAND – SHEEP CARCASS YIELD RESEARCH
Research to improve carcass yield
15 November 2006. Source: Meat Processing, Meat News
www.meatnews.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Article&artNum=13004
SCOTLAND -- Sheep research to link new genetics and carcass quality. Modern research technology is to be harnessed as part of a new project to identify genetic factors to improve the lean meat yield from sheep.
Quality Meat Scotland is collaborating with other red meat industry bodies to fund the four-year project, aimed at using technology to breed higher value sheep to meet market needs.
The Scottish Agricultural College, SAC, is to lead the project, which will use modern research technology to validate genetic factors that could lead to improvements in the lean meat yield from sheep.
The research will also further test and help to calibrate a new video image scanning and analysis (VISA) system for the objective evaluation of lamb carcasses. This project is the result of a major government and industry funded collaboration which will see researchers from across the UK working with representatives of the lamb breeding and meat industry to evaluate new DNA based genetic test methods and automatic carcass evaluation systems, that can be built into selection programs for sheep breeding.
The project will have the short acronym “Sheep QTL and VISA” and is jointly funded by the BBSRC [the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council], Defra, EBLEX [the English Beef & Lamb Executive], QMS [Quality Meat Scotland], HCC [Hybu Cig Cymru/Meat Promotion Wales (HCC)], Livestock and Meat Commission for Northern Ireland, the Scottish Association of Meat Wholesalers and Catapult Systems Ltd through the Sustainable Livestock Production LINK program.
The research team from SAC is headed by Dr Lutz Bunger and is partnered by scientists from the Institute of Rural Sciences at the University of Wales Aberystwyth, the Roslin Institute, the University of Bristol, BioSS (Biomathematics and Statistics Scotland), and with forward thinking and supportive partners from industry (Catapult Systems Ltd, Innovis Genetics Ltd, Welsh Country Foods Ltd, E+V Technology GmbH, ASDA Stores, Jonathan Barber (Charollais breeder), Suffolk Sire Referencing Scheme Ltd and British Texel Sheep Society Ltd).
The four-year project involves comprehensively evaluating the effects of three specific ‘muscling’ segments of chromosomes which contain naturally occurring mutations that affect muscle growth [QTLs = quality trait loci] and which can be determined from a DNA blood test. The researchers will use Catapult’s DNA testing services to classify animals according to the number of copies of QTL known to affect muscle growth in Texel and Dorset sheep which have been identified from previous research in both the UK and New Zealand.
Computer tomography and VISA along with other methods will be used to evaluate the relationships between QTL presence and carcass and meat quality, with particular reference to lean content, muscle volume and shape. And, as part of the process, VISA will be evaluated. This promising new technology promises to provide a transparent value-based marketing system with the potential to send clear and accurate market signals from the consumer upward through the whole supply chain to primary producers. Such a system must have the means to identify the value of individual carcasses based on carcass conformation and composition, yield of lean meat and individual cuts. Given their potential benefits to the supply chain, such systems need detailed evaluation, and, in particular, they need to be calibrated for the whole sheep sector within the UK.
Speaking about this new research project, Dr Lutz Bunger of SAC’s Livestock Systems Group said: “In recent years, considerable research effort has gone into identifying exploitable QTLs for important production traits across the different livestock species. The challenge now is to successfully integrate these QTLs into practical livestock improvement programs to the benefit of the whole supply chain and ultimately consumers.”
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