{"id":874406,"date":"2026-08-31T00:22:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-31T00:22:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/874406\/"},"modified":"2026-08-31T00:22:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-31T00:22:10","slug":"on-farm-genetic-testing-quick-reliable-solution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/874406\/","title":{"rendered":"On-Farm Genetic Testing: Quick, Reliable Solution"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Fast, on-farm genetic testing for cattle is practical and achievable for northern producers, according to University of Queensland research.<\/p>\n<p>In partnership with Meat &amp; Livestock Australia and the Department of Primary Industries, a team from UQ&#8217;s  <a href=\"https:\/\/qaafi.uq.edu.au\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation<\/a>  (QAAFI) tested low pass nanopore sequencing on 3 commercial farms.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/about.uq.edu.au\/experts\/18393\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Associate Professor Elizabeth Ross<\/a>  said the team produced reliable data for age, genomic breeding values (GBVs) and parentage for about 24 animals in less than 24 hours on each farm.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The platform provides a practical solution for northern beef systems because it allows producers to obtain core genetic information on farm without multiple musters or lengthy lab turnaround times,&#8221; Dr Ross said.<\/p>\n<p>Low pass nanopore sequencing reads about 10 per cent of the total genome, or 300 million DNA positions.<\/p>\n<p>It compares to SNP array-based genotyping, which has been used since the late 1990s and reads 30,000-100,000 DNA positions.<\/p>\n<p>Dr Ross said it gives a good indication of an animal&#8217;s overall genetic merit and also reads markers that attach to the DNA as the animal ages.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This process solves the problems associated with long mustering intervals, imprecise birthdates, uncertain parentage and the lengthy turnaround time of traditional laboratory-based genotyping,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<p>The team completed DNA extraction, sample processing and library preparation in about 4 hours, with stable overnight sequencing conducted on farm.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/about.uq.edu.au\/experts\/22854\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Dr Loan Nguyen<\/a> , an ARC Early Career Industry Fellow working in an applied genomics, said challenges remained before the technology could be commercialised, but the work showed what was possible.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It achieved a breakthrough in age prediction, estimating the age of young cattle to within less than 6 months,&#8221; Dr Nguyen said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We also confirmed that hair is an excellent sample type for this kind of work, as it is already routinely used by producers.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This means producers can take samples when animals are put through a crush for routine management practises and on-farm genetic testing can begin straight away.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>A producer survey carried out as part of the project found strong interest in rapid on-farm genomics, particularly for bull selection, culling decisions, identifying replacement females and strengthening pedigree accuracy.<\/p>\n<p>More than 80 per cent of respondents said parentage verification would be very useful, while half valued the 24-hour turnaround times.<\/p>\n<p>While cost remains a barrier, 40 per cent of those surveyed said they would be prepared to pay a premium for faster results.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This is the first time we&#8217;ve shown that a single low-cost sequencing test can provide accurate age estimates, parentage values and GBVs,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This all-in-one approach dramatically improves the practicality of genomics in Australia&#8217;s northern herds.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fast, on-farm genetic testing for cattle is practical and achievable for northern producers, according to University of Queensland&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":874407,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[64,63,105],"class_list":["post-874406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=874406"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874406\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/874407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=874406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=874406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=874406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}