Cross-country beef gene research

ABC Rural - Australia

Friday, 05/09/2008

Australia's Beef CRC has joined forces with the US Department of Agriculture and several American and Canadian universities to improve gene marker research.

The gene markers of more than 15,000 animals will be studied.

Dr Heather Burrow, from the Beef CRC, says the project means research will be faster and more reliable, but Australia isn't giving away any trade secrets.

"So we're all using a common panel to discover those markers that are associated with the traits that we are interested in," she says.

'So if we're all using common markers we're not going to discover something new in terms of the markers.

"But what we will do is a better job using the international collaboration to identify the markers that are having a big effect, particularly here in Australia."

abc.net.au