NSIP and LAMBPLAN finalize formal agreement

Englewood, CO and Fayetteville, AR – The skill in breeding sheep for any purpose relies on the ability of the producer to select parent animals that have superior sets of genes to contribute to the next generation. The National Sheep Improvement Program (NSIP) and Meat and Livestock Australia (MLA) put signatures to an agreement that will make LAMBPLAN available to U.S. sheep producers.

“The partnership we are forging with LAMBPLAN and MLA provides sustainability for genetic evaluation services in the United States,” comments James Morgan, Ph.D., chairman of NSIP. “The U.S. sheep industry has made a large investment in the research needed for genetic evaluation. This partnership will meld the U.S. research with the outstanding service infrastructure of LAMBPLAN. Also, the U.S. sheep industry is looking forward to the collaboration between U.S. and Australian sheep researchers to develop new genetic evaluation tools for the 21st century.”

The partnership allows producers to take advantage of LAMBPLAN’s human resources, technical ability and advanced software that will allow expected progeny differences (EPD) to be created for more traits. Production traits such as growth rate, fat and muscle depth, wool weight and quality, reproduction and internal parasite resistance can be processed and delivered to the producer within two weeks.

“Stronger collaboration with one of our key trading partners on genetic evaluation tools has the potential to significantly increase the benefits from research and development to new technology on industry profitability and competitiveness,” says Kate Joseph, president of Sheepmeat Council of Australia.

NSIP will maintain active representation to support the needs of U.S. producers. A portal to LAMBPLAN is being developed on the NSIP Web site, http://www.nsip.org, where clients will sign up to participate. Information can be input directly into a producer’s computer, sent to LAMBPLAN and EPDs will be returned. Producers will pay a flock fee that will enable them to download and submit data and will also pay a processing fee on the number of animals processed.

Additional information will be available on the NSIP Web site as it becomes available.