After last week’s budget confirmed that the Beef Genomics Scheme would provide funding of €100/head on the first 10 cows for suckler producers, will it lead to a greater uptake of the scheme?

Genomic selection based on DNA information is not a new technology in Ireland, having been available to Irish dairy farmers in 2009.

In 2014, 60% of semen used in Irish dairy herds was from genomically tested bulls. While these bulls have no daughters milking, the reliability of the Economic Breeding Index (EBI) has almost doubled from 32% to 58%. To put this in context, the increase reliability is the equivalent of a bull having 57 daughters on the ground and being milk recorded. Using genomics to identify breeding traits through DNA has been shown to improve trait accuracy by up to 54%.