NEW Zealand’s pre-eminent animal breeding scientist wants to branch out into radiata pine trees, ryegrass and white clover.
Professor Dorian Garrick will be chief scientist for the newly-formed Massey University AL Rae Centre for Genetics and Breeding, based at AgResearch’s Ruakura campus just outside of Hamilton.
The centre was launched last week with a funding fanfare from The Norman FB Barry Foundation and a function attended by Prime Minister Bill English and his principal science adviser, Sir Peter Gluckman.
Garrick’s homecoming after 15 years’ teaching in the United States and consulting around the world has been hailed as the beginning of a renaissance for population genetics, and the training of PhD students in several disciplines.
Massey professorial colleague Hugh Blair said money was not enough to draw students and industry support, and that the new centre’s drawcard was Garrick as chief scientist.
“I’ve been trying to get him to return for a number of years,” Blair said.
“He is one of the world’s top animal breeders and he has worked on a variety of genetic improvement programmes around the world including beef cattle, dairy cattle, dual-purpose sheep, fine-woolled sheep, pigs, elk, chickens, salmon and tree breeding.”
Garrick said the now somewhat neglected and underfunded field of quantitative breeding – which is selection through progeny testing – must be brought together with the newer, faster but expensive molecular genetics.
“NZ has numerous opportunities to improve the returns from its primary industries through selection based on more accurate predictions of performance using genomic data,” he said.
Work at the new centre would be applicable to a wide range of traits and species.
Garrick said NZ had five economically important species in which this country must do the science, because no one would do it for us – sheep, deer, radiata pine trees, ryegrass and white clover.
“These are priority areas because these species influence prosperity in NZ,” he said.
“In other species like maize, pigs and chickens, we are too small to run elite breeding programmes, and access is purchased from overseas.
“Dairy genetic improvement has been well-served through LIC and other breeding companies, and beef cattle work is shared around several key countries.”
Farmer breeders found it challenging and expensive to use molecular genetics so collaborative funding and resourcing via groups like Beef + Lamb NZ Genetics was essential.
“We can lift the game considerably in sheep, beef and pasture genomics,” Garrick said.
Productivity improvements through genetics in these species had lagged behind the 1-2% annually expected by most breeding programmes.
For instance, cattle growth rates had improved partly through higher mature cow weights, requiring more feed, but resulting in less efficiency.
“My work is on the theory of how we put different traits together for selection indexes and breeding programmes, then applying them to whichever industries want to address their particular problems.”
Garrick and his students will have access to adequate computing power, in NZ and in the cloud, but access to phenotypic records for all traits may be more limiting.
“In the past the people who ran herd recording schemes, for instance, never talked to molecular geneticists, so their data sets never came together,” Garrick said.
“Now we are still using pedigree and performance, but for the best outcomes we combine that with molecular information obtained by DNA profiling.”
There had been inadequate levels of graduates and post-doctoral researchers trained in NZ agriculture in recent decades.
Animal genetics in NZ went through a lean period after the introduction of tuition fees for students who wanted to go on for PhDs. Also, fewer post-graduates were produced by the agricultural faculties following the talk of sunset industries.
Garrick also pointed back to a misguided view that breed records had intellectual property value that should be kept secret, without sharing of data.
“Now those organisations recognise they get more value from having other people working on their data.
“More students realise that data science in agriculture can be exciting with modern techniques such as genomics.”
Industry bodies and companies clustered around Hamilton were expected to put forward staff members for further training – for example, from LIC, CRV Ambreed and DairyNZ.
This was among the reasons the AL Rae Centre would be at Ruakura, and not one of Massey’s three campuses.
Barry Foundation trustee and Associate Professor Tony Pleasants, also a sheep and beef farmer, said Garrick was a unique geneticist who was passionate about applying his work to help farmers.
He had inherited the common touch from mentor Al Rae, along with the understanding that animal breeding didn’t exist outside of farming systems.
He was ideally placed to apply new technologies to primary sector matters, such as animal efficiency and maintenance energy, environmental constraints and epigenetics.
Molecular geneticists had spent a fortune on DNA sequencing, but the real world needed “agricultural engineers” like Garrick to apply that knowledge, Blair said.
Blair is chairman of the NZ organising committee for the 11th World Congress on Genetics Applied to Livestock Production to be held in Auckland next February, a four-yearly event, and Garrick is on the committee.
