NEW estimated breeding values (EBVs) within the Australian Wagyu herd will see unprecedented production growth within the next five years.
That is according to chief executive of the Australian Wagyu Association (AWA), Graham Truscott who has delivered three Wagyu Performance field days in Western Australia, Victorian and NSW, with researchers from the Agricultural Business Research Institute.
A survey in 2013, conducted by the association, showed producers planned to significantly increase their production levels on the back of improved prices and recovered demand.
Back in 2013, Wagyu registrations doubled to nearly 6000, with an additional rise of 14pc recorded last year.
"The key claim to fame with Wagyu is of course carcase quality delivering eating quality," Mr Truscott said.
"The problem this breed has faced is that it has not had a means to accurately identify marbling predictors for the genetics, as the technology available to date in the genetics field has been ultrasonic scanning on live animals."
With stock being scanned at about 12-14 months-of-age, and Wagyu long fed to more than 30 months-old, Mr Truscott said the Intramuscular Fat (IMF) Estimated Breeding Values did not accurately reflect the sire's potential and could not genetically predict marbling.
This has seen a number of originally imported sires from the 1990s continued to be the most used Wagyu bloodlines despite their sons genetically outdoing their performance.
"People were stating that the percentage IMF EBV was not accurate and couldn't be relied upon and essentially were not trusting BreedPlan in breeding Wagyu," Mr Truscott said.
"One of the problems with the breed, and the reason we did the Wagyu Collaborative Genetics Research project, was because people didn't know enough about the performance of the genetics, they were conservative and not moving on from the original genetics from the 1990s."
The research project, jointly funded by AWA and Meat & Livestock Australia, was established in 2013, gathered carcase data from some 3000 full-blood Wagyu steers and females, and used a Japanese digital imaging camera to predict carcase quality using end-point carcase measurements of eye muscle area, marbling percentage and marbling fineness.
With the first stage of carcase research completed, there are now accurate carcase EBVs available for 310 sires and more than 2000 breeding females on the database.
"The new genetic parameters that have come out of the project include heritability and correlation between traits which have been used to tailor the world leading BreedPlan technology specifically to Wagyu," Mr Truscott said.
"Actual carcase data now contributes to eye muscle area and carcase weight EBVs, increasing their accuracy.
"A new marble score EBV based on Ausmeat Marble Score and camera marbling percent has now replaced the percentage IMF."
He said a new marbling fineness EBV and a Full-blood Terminal Index had also been established for Wagyu.
"With this Full-blood Terminal Index we can now find the high performers within the breed -- it predicts the additional value per slaughter progeny that a bull or female will produce," he said.
"The whole point of doing genetic analysis is to find the good breeding animals. We didn't have the means to find the good ones until we did this piece of work."
The research has been extraordinary with the new index showing the top bull to deliver progeny with a slaughter value more than $500 per offspring better than the breed average bull.
"That bull can produce 1000 steers per year through AI so the bull is capable of delivering, in pure commercial terms, $500,000 more value than the average bull per year," he said.
"That's why these new EBVs and index will drive value of the top performing Wagyu animals very rapidly and we can now identify them."
