Brief Summary of Minutes of Annual Meeting

Accomplishments:

Objective 1: Provide a venue for the discussion and exchange of information for the many disconnected and diverse research activities--biological, genomic, statistical, computational, and economical--that support National Cattle Evaluation (NCE).

• The previous NCERA-225 meeting was held in January 2021 due to COVID-19 issues. The 2021 meeting, held December 3, 2021 virtually, covers the timeframe from end of February through December 2021. Efforts were made to hold the meeting in-person, but the COVID-19 pandemic did not make that possible for many members. Therefore, a virtual meeting was held to ensure adequate attendance.
• During this period, member participants were active in NBCEC, the NBCEC Brown Bagger Series, and BIF board and annual meeting.
• This committee’s meeting is one of the only places where leaders in the area of genetic evaluation in the beef industry meet on an annual basis. The most pioneering methods and technologies are discussed and debated. Ideas from the meeting help inform research priorities and activities for the coming year.
• Training of next generation producers and scientist are critical for advancements in the field of genetic evaluation to continue. Committee members were engaged in teaching activities such as undergraduate curriculum and graduate student training in addition to outreach to producer groups (see publications).
  • Committee members J. Bormann, M. Enns, L. Hanna, M. Spangler, and M. Rolf continue discussions and collaboration through AG*IDEA Quantitative Genetics and Genomics program to offer graduate training in areas relevant to beef cattle genetic evaluations.

Objective 2: Develop through this exchange new tools for delivery and use of beef cattle genetic research, including genomic information, to beef breed associations and beef cattle producers.

• Continued collaborations between committee members as well as beef breed associations and genetic evaluation groups have led to the enhanced single breed evaluations as well as development of prototype multi-breed genetic evaluations with genomic enhancement. Examples include:
  • USMARC and UNL members collaborate on applying results from low-pass sequencing to problems in cattle evaluation programs.
  • USMARC and NDSU members collaborate on partitioning X chromosome from autosomal breeding values.
  • Committee members B. Golden and M. Spangler collaborated with other researchers to develop and implement a Deep Neural Network for the categorization of birth weight phenotypes by data generation process. This serves as a means of filtering and weighting data based on quality prior to genetic evaluations, which is currently being used by International Genetics Solutions (IGS).
  • Committee members L. Kuehn, M. Spangler, and M. Thallman along with collaborator W. Snelling estimated genetic parameters and breed effects for mature cow weight and body condition score to parameterize a multi-breed evaluation for these traits. This is currently being prototyped by IGS.
  • Committee members Spiedel and colleagues at Colorado State University collaborated with IGS on several prototype characteristics for multi-breed evaluations, such as Pulmonary Arterial Pressure EPD and genetic variability of PAP.
  • USMARC and CSU collaborated on pooled genotyping for Bovine Respiratory Disease susceptibility and inheritance.
• Committee members continue to collaborate on the development of genetic understanding and/or EPDs for novel traits, including early indicators for longevity; muscle and meat quality; biomarkers for traits such as BRD susceptibility, RFI, and temperament; software and data pipelines for improved genomic investigations; characterization of major histology complexes in cattle; effects of climate in genetic evaluations; among other traits.

Objective 3: Update the beef cattle industry on current developments in beef breeding and genetics research including changes in genomic tools and analyses.

• Committee members M. Spangler and R. Weaber led the 2021 Brown Brown Bagger Series of webinars to provide education content county, district, regional and state extension educator and breed association technical staff on new and emerging issues/developments in beef cattle genetic evaluation. This series is nationally known for the educational content provided. The 2021 series featured committee members M. Spangler and R. Weaber.
• Committee members J. Decker, M. Rolf, M. Spangler, R. Weaber collaborate with other extension and research staff to maintain and expand the availability of beef genetics extension materials available online at eBEEF.org.
  • Members Rolf and Weaber were recipients of the 2021 BIF Ambassador Award for their efforts.
• A wide range of committee members interface beef producers and various organization involved in selection and genetic improvement via presentations, symposia or trade publications, including BIF and NBCEC. A list of those presentations is included with the annual report (see publications – abstracts and proceedings as well as presentations sections).

Objective 4: Collaborate with appropriate groups (eg. BIF, and USDA/NIFA funded Integrated Projects) on research and outreach.

• A number of committee members are routinely engaged in genetic evaluation system development and deployment for various breed associations. This engagement leads to the direct incorporation of novel research and development into national cattle evaluation systems.
• Several committee members serve on the BIF board of directors: M. Enns, M. Rolf, M. Spangler, and R. Weaber.
• Committee members B. Golden, L. Kuehn, M. Spangler, M. Thallman, R. Weaber along with collaborator W. Snelling completed beta testing of iGENDEC software to enable customizable economic index construction. Currently efforts are collaborating with BIF to make software widely available.
• Committee members M. Spangler and R. Weaber along with many collaborators and ebeef.org completed the 3rd edition of the NBCEC Sire Selection Manual, which is available at: https://ebeef.ucdavis.edu/2021-nbcec-beef-cattle-sire-selection-manual (Last accessed 28 Jan 2022).