The UK-based Sheep Breeders Round Table 2019 is taking place in East Midlands from Friday 15 November to Sunday 17 November. The event is organised with the support of industry bodies Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (ADHB), AgriSearch, HYBU CIG CYMRU (Wales), the National Sheep Association (NSA), Quality Meat Scotland (QMS), iSAGE and Scotland's Rural College (SRUC).

Day one of the event featured a strong focus on the important role performance recording plays in underpinning genetic progress. Session one was titled Developing a Resilient UK Sheep Industry and included five presentations. The standout messages from each speaker is summarised below, with more in-depth reporting to follow.

Breeding for resilience

Professor Georgios Banos, SRUC, said sheep sectors worldwide are going to have to prepare to deal with increased weather volatility. He said a potential benefit of changing weather patterns may be a longer growing season but the advantages of this are likely to be well counterbalanced by weather extremes such as intense rainfall and flooding and extremes in temperature.

A trial looking at how weather affects the performance of Scottish Blackface sheep has shown that growth is affected to varying degrees in sheep. The performance of some sheep suffers, while others maintain stable growth irrespective of weather. As such, Georgios said it will be possible to breed sheep with enhanced adaptation and resilience characteristics.

Sheep that are more resilient to weather extremes tend to have lower growth rates

However, initial research has shown that there is a downside to basing selection on resilience as there is an antagonistic relationship between growth and resilience.

This means that sheep that are more resilient to weather extremes tend to have lower growth rates.

He said that further work is under way to see what the optimum level of resilience is to select and potentially incorporate into breeding programmes.

While further research is also required to see what effect focusing on resilience could have on other important production parameters.

Meaning of sustainability

Marion Johnson from the Organic Research Centre told conference delegates that sustainability is a word that is increasingly bandied about and that we should question what it means. She cited an example of palm oil being hailed as a sustainable product yet its production had led to the destruction of rainforests in some countries.

She said that the sheep industry needs to be careful what it pushes for in sustainability labels and take care that an accurate message is being portrayed. Marion is heading up a new initiative called iSAGE sustainability assessments, and the development of an iSAGE sustainability toolbox.

This will give farmers the power to assess their own systems to see how sustainable they are across numerous production parameters and also identify areas where improvements can be made. The target is to have the toolbox up and running in December.

Genotype x environment interactions

Ann McLaren, researcher with the SRUC hill and mountain research centre, also looked at genetic resilience and genotype x environment interactions. Scottish Blackface sheep of comparable genotype were run across two very different environments.

Overall a low level of genotype x environment interaction was observed despite 30 different rams being used. There were small differences identified for lamb birth weight and pre-mating weight while there was significant differences on the ram side, with some sires re-ranking heavily across different environments.

Parasite resilience

Since 2012, the trial has also being looking at parasite resilience including faecal egg counts, dag scores and liveweight gain. Ann says a positive outcome is a favourable correlation between genotype and different parasites with a positive correlation between high genetic merit ewes and faecal egg counts. This means that genetic selection can take place without negatively affecting productivity, with ongoing assessment taking place in this area.

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