Beef cattle

Across-Country Correlations of Feed Efficiency Traits in Beef Cattle

---

Abstract

With growing emphasis on the sustainability of food production systems, improving feed efficiency and carcass performance in beef cattle will have a global impact. Feed efficiency and carcass traits have been collected across multiple regions to support genetic evaluations and breeding programs. The objective of this study was to understand the genetic parameters of feed efficiency traits in beef cattle from the United States (US) and Brazil (BRA), providing insights into potential regional differences in sire rankings across countries. A dataset containing phenotypic and pedigree information on 1,369 and 588 Angus influenced beef cattle were selected from US and BRA populations, respectively. These animals were progeny of 27 sires, each having ≥2 progeny in each region. There were 50.8±63.9 and 21.8±21.0 progeny per sire in US and BRA populations, respectively. Phenotypes analyzed were average daily gain (ADG), average daily dry matter intake (DMI), and residual feed intake (RFI). RFI was used to measure the feed efficiency of the animals, and calculated as DMI corrected for Metabolic Mid-Weight, ADG and Sex. Genetic parameters were estimated using bivariate sire genetic models in ASREML with contemporary group and sex as fixed effects, and on test age as a covariate. The residual covariance between regions was fixed at zero as there were no overlapping offspring measured in both regions. Heritability estimates tended to be lower in BRA than US: 0.11±0.12 vs 0.20±0.15 (ADG), 0.11±0.10 vs 0.52±0.23 (DMI), and 0.05±0.08 vs 0.12±0.11 (RFI). The phenotypic correlations of average offspring phenotype between US and BRA for the 27 sires were 0.025 (ADG), -0.31 (DMI), and 0.063 (RFI). Genetic correlations between these two regions were strongly negative with large standard errors: -0.83±0.84 (ADG), -0.22±0.74 (DMI), and -0.91±0.55 (RFI). Despite large standard errors, our results indicated that there may be major reranking of sires across the two regions for feed efficiency traits, highlighting the complexity of implementing a universal evaluation for these traits across countries. When making breeding decisions, we recommend measuring progeny feed efficiency regionally and using sire expected progeny differences (EPDs) tailored to the region to ensure accurate selection and optimal genetic progress.

Keywords: 2026

How to Cite:

Weng, Z., Hess, M. & Grigoletto, L., (2026) “Across-Country Correlations of Feed Efficiency Traits in Beef Cattle”, World Congress on Genetics Applied to Livestock Production Digital Archive 2026(1): 2285858. doi: https://doi.org/10.31274/wcgalp.23810

Rights: 1