The Scottish Government has selected Neogen to carry out genomics testing as part of its program to enhance the country's beef herd.
The program, dubbed the Beef Efficiency Scheme, aims to improve the overall herd profitability and to make the country’s beef herd more sustainable, both economically and environmentally.
The project’s life time is five years and at present it involves the Scottish government, Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC) and Neogen.
Neogen’s European GeneSeek laboratory will be responsible for the project’s animal genetyping and in supplying sampling kits.
The output of Scottish beef was about £825m in 2013 and the beef industry alone contributes to about 26% of Scotland’s agricultural output – the biggest single sector in Scottish agricultural industry.
The weather condition, soil type and overall topography help cattle thrive in the region.
Neogen European business development manager Dr. Gary Evans said: "The genotyping will be performed using our new GGP-NG 50K chip and the results that we produce will be used by SRUC, which is developing predictions for improved genetic selection in respect of growth rates, feed conversion, maternal behavior, nutrition practice, and disease resistance for commercial beef farmers.
"We won the contract through a competitive tender issued by Scottish Government, and a part of our success was due to our new European genomics facility in Ayr."
Neogen says that it will replicate all of its processes, procedures and equipment in Europe with that of its flagship GeneSeek laboratory in Nebraska, US. This replication and integration of information technology systems between the two labs can create one integrated operation across the two sites.
