Developing genomic tests to improve meat quality in Canadian beef cattle

This project is developing genomic tools to predict meat quality, including beef tenderness in Canadian Beef Cattle. Through extensive phenotyping of thousands of animals for efficiency and meat quality traits through the University of Guelph feedlot and meat laboratory, the required phenotypes were obtained. These cattle originate from a combination of commercial producers as well as the University of Guelph’s beef cattle herd. The cattle are predominantly crossbred of Angus and Simmental breeding with some use of terminal sires such as Piedmontese and Charolais. The breeding in the research herd is exclusively through AI. The animals with phenotypes are genotyped with high density SNP panels. By sequencing the key sires represented in the population, sequence will be imputed into the animals with the unique phenotypes with greater accuracy. This imputed sequence associated with the targeted traits will be used to develop more accurate across-breed tools for breeders, producers and processors of beef cattle for these important meat quality and efficiency traits.