AgriBio principal research scientist Professor John Forster, has told the second AgriVictoria summit biotechnology had the potential to future proof Australia’s agricultural industries.
He said AgriBio, the $288 million research joint venture between La Trobe University and the Victorian Government, was a key player, in boosting productivity.
“As a geneticist, the key thing we see coming out of that is the ability to accelerate genetic gain, both in animal breeding and also for a range of crop species,” Prof Forster said.
He said adverse times allowed a pause to look at new ways of improving productivity, and the potential to “future proof” Australia’s agricultural feedbase.
Research into the effects of heat stress on dairy cattle, was a key part of AgriBio’s research.
“All our predictions on future climate change, involve increasing average temperatures and more extreme events,” Prof Forster said.
Heat reduced feed intake and milk yield, “which is bad news for the producer.”
“Using dense genetic information, along with detailed production records and climate information, allowed for the identification of the best parents for breeding improvement.”
AgriBio’s collection of genetic information had been enhanced by more powerful technology, coupled with decreasing unit costs.
“We have the capacity to sequence around 4000 cattle genomes a week - let me put that into perspective for you.
“I arrived in Victoria, nearly 20 years ago, at that time a PhD student or scientist, could potentially look at the DNA sequence of two or three genes, each gene is less than one millionth of the content of the entire genome. We can obtain predictions of breeding values, the difference is these are genomic breeding values, they are based on the genetic fingerprint of an animal, rather than the performance of relatives.”
He said that cut the time required to determine the value of a bull.
Another area of improvement was in the breeding of pasture grasses, with increased herbiage yield and biomass production.
Prof Forster said, despite the hard work and effort of seed companies, ryegrass breeding had been slow and inefficient.
“The average rate of genetic improvement has been less than one per cent, a year, if you compare that to broadacre crops, that’s pitiful.”
Breeders had selected varieties visually, but this resulted in “plenty of room for error.”
But using aerial surveying plants, through drones and blimps, gave the ability to capture a large amount of plant information.
AgriBio scientists had also used ground based systems to determine plant height and density, and this information had now been released to the seed breeding industry.
Dairy Futures Cooperative Research Centre chief executive Dr David Nation summed up some of the scientific breakthroughs, there and at AgriBio..
“The prize, from our perspective, is pasture that delivers dairy farmers $500 more productivity, per year, per hectare – that is about the equivalent of about 30 years progress in pasture breeding.”
Dr Nation said that would mean a $100 per cow productivity increase. per year.
In the next five years, productivity could be increased to $800 a hectare for pasture and $350 per cow.
“One of the real advantages of doing this work is it is permanent and compounded.
“Imagine if you could get so much more productivity, out of home grown feed ?”
He said AgriBio was not reinventing the wheel, but using existing plants.
“What we have managed to do in Victoria, which is a true world first, is to be able to find a way, by typing their pollen.
“In the same way you might have your own blood type, of having separate lines of plants, that you make as different as possible, if you put them out in final stage of plant breeding, they come together and create first crosses and deliver a 20 per cent yield advantage.”
That was compared with half a per cent a year through traditional methods, which was a “massive change” for the industry.
“We now have, in the ground, a reconstructed variety with ten per cent more yield, ten per cent more carbohydrates, and five days delay, in flowering, so therefore more nutritious.
“And that’s just from one generation of dipping into the variety of seed and finding better plants.”
Commercial seed breeders were now able to breed more productive plants.
Work was also being carried out on animal genetics, through DNA testing.
Dr Nation said breeding was already complicated enough, with more than 40 traits which could be measured for each bull.
“Like all things that are complex, how do you make it simple ? You come up with a weighted, basket index – in our case a balanced performance index, that covers across all the types of traits, farmers might want to select for.”
He said with 90 per cent of dairy cows getting pregnant through AI, allowing for active decisions on what genetics were used.
“About 90 per cent of semen used is Holstein or Jersey, so you only have two breeds to really improve, and you can improve the vast majority of the Austrlaian dairy herd, and at the moment over 70 pc of the semen used in the herd is imported, so we can have genetics from overseas, largely.”
“But we can’t just take product from overseas, and assume it works in this country, so our real work is that we make sure the genetic decisions, chosen by farmers, really suit them.”
Almost 40pc of semen sold was now based on DNA results, not on the historic ways of evaluating its parent.
The plan was to gain the genotype of 60,000 dairy cows, throughout Australia, within the next two years.
“This represents the full breadth of dairy farming, in this country, and their information is passed through to the centre.”
Work on research stations would also be fed back to farmers.
This included checking methane emissions from cattle, tracking how much feed was consumed and pasture measurements.
“You feed all that information through AgrBio’s infrastructure and turn it into new ways of breeding varities, that’s the future for us, to work with both farm records and research stations records to continue to pump out more robust measures of performance which can go into pasture and feed improvements.”
