This pilot project will evaluate the adoption of genomic tools and genetic selection strategies on reducing GHG emissions and improving profit at the herd level as compared with the baseline of practice. These tools include genomic breed composition, hybrid vigour score, genomic Expected Progeny Difference values (gEPDs) for 12 traits balanced into a Feeder Profit Index™ and a Replacement Heifer Profit Index Score™.

In collaboration with Viresco Solutions and an industry based-advisory committee, the research teams will develop and test a carbon offset protocol for cow-calf producers. This protocol, if approved by Alberta Environment or Environment Canada, will allow cow-calf producers to aggregate and sell carbon offset credits to large final emitters. Genomic and genetic based Beneficial Management Practices (BMPs) over and above practice usual will be refined by the expert advisory committee. Producers enrolling in the project will be part of the validation and feedback process for the genomic & genetic selection BMPs, and will support economic and GHG emissions analyses.

Benefits to producers

• No cost for 100k SNP genotypes on pilot project enrolled animals
• Genomic values reports with genomic tools and their accuracies
• Workshops for implementation genomic/genetic selection BMPs to improve profit & reduce GHG
• Access to GHG emissions analysis results for your farm
• Input into Alberta Carbon Offset Cow Calf protocol development
• Future access to gEPDs for reduced methane emissions balanced into multi-trait indexes

Enrolment and Participation

1. Contact Livestock Gentec (403-660-4155); lsgentec@ualberta.ca)
2. Complete intake survey and intake forms
3. Collect tissue samples from pilot project animals
4. Collect production data for pilot baseline defined in supplied templates
5. Attend BMP workshop
6. Year 1 production cycle – genotyping and baseline operation data collection from cow-calf producers
7. Year 2 production cycle- implementation of pilot BMPs on farm
8. GHG emissions analysis and producer interviews
9. Producer summary session and Alberta Carbon Offset Cow Calf protocol review

Eligibility

• Cow-based records for reproduction and performance during baseline and BMP pilot implementation
• Tissue sample collection from breeding animals for genotyping and selection supplies provided
• Farm overview questionnaire for emissions, economic analysis and BMP implementation plan
• Willingness to participate in producer interviews
• Two on-site fecal collections for emissions proxy measures
• Permission for Livestock Gentec to use genotypes and farm data for analysis

One of Gentec’s Core Values is the transfer of science into practice by getting knowledge and tools directly into the hands of producers.

We focus on developing research projects that deliver clear value to the industry – often driven from the questions and needs from the industry itself. In doing so, we not only find answers to industry questions, but also help train the next generation of industry leaders.

We bring science into practice in many ways—through participation in industry conferences, local producer-focused meetings, podcasts, media interviews, farm visits, and on-farm team training, to name a few. We also focus on developing practical tools and resources that support informed, data-driven decision-making at the farm level.

Below are a few examples of how the Gentec Swine KKT team has been active in fulfilling our commitment.

Conference Spotlight: Science Meets Practice in Gilt Development

On March 25-26^th, Gentec’s Jenny Patterson was an invited speaker at the 2025 Ontario Swine Conference– marking the first year the London Swine Conference and Ontario Pork’s Annual General Meeting werecombined. The conference provided science-backed insights to help drive progress in Ontario’s swine sector with over 500 of the industy’s best in attendance.

Jenny joined TJ Klopp and Kendra Foran from Cedar Villa Farms in a session titled “Gilts: The Foundation of Your Herd – Science into Practice”. Together they delivered a combination of science based research findings with the practical on-farm side of raising and managing replacement gilts. TJ, a 7th-generation farmer from Zurich, ON, and Kendra, the Barn Manager at Cedar Villa’s Gilt Developer Barn, shared how their operation—marketing 100,000 hogs annually—puts science into practice.

Producer Meeting: Knowledge transfer to Alberta Producers

On April 30^th, 2025, Jenny Patterson was a special guest speaker at the Prairie Livestock Veterinarians Producer Meeting in Strathmore, Alberta. The event brought together a small group of Alberta producers for discussions on key industry topics.

PLV Veterinarian’s Dr. Jessica Law presented on “Industry and International Disease Updates” and Dr. Rienske Mortier spoke on “Practical Treatment and Euthanasia”. Jenny’s session, focused on “Gilt Development – Start with the End in Mind“.

PodCast Alert: Strengthening Gilt Development for Long-Term Productivity

In March, Jenny was invited to the Popular Pig Podcast with Matthew Rooda. The Popular Pig Podcast presents information on the latest trends, news, and research from various experts that guide the global pork industry.

As highlighted, Jenny and Matt discussed a variety topics including “Why a strong gilt development program is key to narrowing the gap between genetic potential and on-farm performance”, “How early culling and poor retention after parity one are major roadblocks to sow lifetime productivity—and what can be done about it”, and “What “fertility quadrant” targets you should hit for optimal breeding success—and why data and body condition tracking post-parity1 are just as vital”.

Strengthening Gilt Development for Long-Term Productivity | Jennifer Patterson

Research in Action: Gentec Back in the Barn with the NSERC Alliance Project

Our NSERC Alliance project with our research partner Hypor Genetics in Saskatchewan continues to move forward. This 4-year project will identify the underlying genetic and phenotypic relationships between different traits in order to achieve more balanced selection to improve sow lifetime productivity, production profitability and sustainability.

We are back in the barn this summer collecting more data and learning new things! We are delighted that Morgan Rioch joined us again, we highlighted her in the “Delicious Bits” article in August 2024.

New to the barn this summer, is of our MSc student, Kayla Patey. Kayla completed a Bachelor of Science in Agriculture, Animal Science at the University of Guelph in 2023 and joined the Gentec team in November 2023 as a Research Assistant, presenting her first poster at the Banff Pork Seminar in January 2024. Before that, Kayla left an exciting career in the gaming and film industry, first earning a diploma in Game Development before coming back to her agriculture roots.

Kayla’s focus will be related to “Litter of Origin Traits” and how pre-weaning growth performance is associated with pre-weaning mortality and subsequent selection and performance in the gilt pool.

Science into Practice: Supporting the farm team

A key part of Jenny’s role at Gentec is supporting Alberta’s producers by putting “Science into Practice”.

Jenny collaborates with industry groups with a focus on gilt management, with the goal of improving lifetime productivity and retention. She loves working with farm production data, through which powerful insights can be developed to make data-driven decisions that positively affect overall herd performance.

Through on-farm visits and virtual calls, Jenny connects with the people who make it all happen—the farm teams—looking at farm data and showing how it translates into day-to-day practices related to gilt development and sow lifetime productivity. In the December 2024 issue of Delicious Bits we shared positive feedback from an industry partner that our activities are helping get the information “to the people in the barn who can make the difference in performance”.

Livestock Gentec strives for research excellence. To be excellent in research we need to be productive and impactful. Just as important, we need to associate with excellent collaborators. We cannot directly quantify excellence, but there are useful metrics to show productivity and impact of research. For example, many sources look at number of published papers, citations, and H-index. H-index is a measure of how many well-cited papers a researcher has published (ie a higher H-index means a researcher has more articles with a high number of citations). Researchers may be familiar with these metrics from various online scholar profiles services such as Google Scholar, ResearchGate and ScholarGPS. These indexing tools are not perfect, but do a good job at consolidating publications online. Researcher profiles on ScholarGPS includes ranks and percentiles based on these productivity and impact measures. In this article, we explore these online tools, their limitations and collaboration as a qualitative aspect of research excellence.

For fun, we looked at our team and collaborators to see how well we stack up in some very active research fields. Livestock Gentec leaders Dr. Graham Plastow and Dr. John Basarab, are both ranked in the top 1% of over 1-million scholars ranked in Agriculture and Natural Resources. When we start looking at their specialties, their ranks jump further. With Dr. John Basarab ranked 58 for over 16,000 beef cattle researchers in publication and Dr. Graham Plastow ranked 176 in over 370,000 genomics researchers. Many of our collaborators also hold leading ranks on ScholarGPS. Dr. Changxi Li, Research Scientist with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada is in the top 1-percentile for publications in genomics. Dr. Tim McAllister, Research Scientist with Agriculture and AgriFood Canada is a top 100 researcher in Agriculture and Natural Resources for publications. Dr. Michael Dyck, Professor University of Alberta is in the top 1-percentile for transcriptomic publications. Dr.  Carolyn Fitzsimmons, Research Scientist Agriculture Agri-Food Canada, is a top 1-percentile for Beef cattle publications as well. We have only highlighted a few, but going through this exercise, we appreciate how many of our partners contribute on a global-scale to their fields.

These metrics and ranks do not tell the full story of productivity. Seminal papers can drive the science forward, cementing their authors’ excellence, regardless of the metrics. Further, length of career will affect how these metrics as well. Adjusted H-index and alternative metrics exist to integrate those considerations. Another common limitation is indexing platforms can create multiple profiles for the same person, biasing against circumstances like changing institutions or names. Acknowledging these limitations, our high-ranking collaborators provide some validation.

We also want to raise the qualitative aspects of excellence in research. For example, sharing knowledge and experience are key to good science. In a healthy scholarly environment, diversity in thought improves ideas. Collaborations also facilitate added capacity through synergies and scale. Excellence in collaboration may be difficult to quantify, but the approach takes an effort worth recognizing. To ground this in an anecdote, Dr. Plastow and Dr. Basarab are involved in an application for Horizon 2025 with a European and Canadian livestock research consortium. This consortium includes researchers from Belgium, France, Netherlands, Denmark, and Canada. One aim in the proposed project is to develop and implement Near Infrared Spectroscopy (NIRS) fecal scans as a proxy measure for enteric methane emissions from beef cattle. Dr. Basarab is PI on collaborative project: “Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions from the Canadian Beef Industry through the Development and Adoption of Genomic Tools” awarded through a NSERC-SSHRC Alliance Grant for sustainable agriculture. This project is well aligned with the new European project as fecal NIRS is proceeding using samples collected from five research sites across Canada. If the application to Horizon 2025 is successful, we will greatly expand our capabilities in both projects to achieve the goal of developing a scalable enteric GHG proxy measure from faecal NIRS in beef cattle.

Metrics have their utility but are not comprehensive in defining excellence in research. Impactful research drives science forward and collaboration is one of our best tools. As such, Livestock Gentec focuses on impactful research and facilitating collaborations to achieve excellence in research. Livestock Gentec’s strategic-framework defines three focuses: excellence in local and applied research; excellence in global research collaboration; and excellence in recruitment, training and placement of highly qualified personnel. Our International Industry and Scientific Committee in its 2022 report summary highlighted the continued need to focus on participatory research and “develop a formalized strategy of integrating current students into industry” (see our strategic framework here). These perspectives challenge us to take a broad-view of research and collaboration success to achieve progress in industry and science.

Dr. John Basarab (RDAR Research Professor, Livestock Gentec CEO, University of Alberta) is PI on the Sustainable CAP funded RDAR administered project: “Sire-based Feeder Profit Index for Beef on Dairy production and marketing systems”. In this project we are developing genomic tools to support improved profitability of a beef on dairy production and marketing system. In Canada and globally, the mating of beef bulls to bottom end dairy cows to produce beef on dairy feeder steers for the beef industry is intensifying. In recent years, the dairy industry has required fewer replacement heifers. This means more dairy cows are available for producing beef on dairy calves. The reduction in replacement heifers is due to factors such as genetic progress in milk yield and cow longevity, adoption of reproductive technologies like sexed-semen and embryo implants, and social pressures limiting herd growth. Using beef breed genetics to produce these slaughter calves improves carcass quality and feed efficiency. We believe applying genomic tools values will produce more profitable beef on dairy feeder calves. Further, we expect a reduction in the greenhouse gas (GHG) intensity (kg CO₂/kg carcass beef) of beef on dairy production through improved feed efficiency, carcass attributes and the sharing of the dairy cow’s GHG emissions between milk and beef production.

In this project, we will conduct genetic evaluation on a historic and novel dataset from a beef on dairy production system to develop more accurate genomic tools. The dataset for this genetic analysis will be comprised of over 200,000 beef on dairy performance and carcass records, pedigree data and beef sire genotypes. We will supplement this dataset with feed efficiency and carcass phenotypes from about 1900 beef on dairy steers. These steers are being evaluated at Olds College with the Technology Access Centre for Beef Production and Thorlakson’s Feedyard from 2025-2027.

Despite production of beef on dairy calves increasing, the access to animals and historical data for research is a major challenge. That is where partners have been critical in bringing this project to life. Dr. Sandi Parr (Director of Cattle Analytics, GK Jim Group of Companies) and her team have coordinated the procurement, logistics and the compilation of the large historical dataset needed to conduct our analyses. These activities require planning well in advance of feed efficiency testing to align with facility availability and animal target sizes. To meet some of these challenges we are also utilizing the recently commissioned feed efficiency monitoring equipment (Growsafe Feed Intake System®, Vytelle®) atThorlakson Feedyard. We are excited to be among the first projects utilizing this new equipment. Thorlakson Feedyard is currently evaluating growth and feed efficiency on 380 steers for this project. The support of industry partners is critical for conducting this research. In turn, this research will support more profitable beef on dairy feeder production.

Dr. John Basarab and Jordan Roberts with Livestock Gentec were able to visit with project team members at Thorlakson Feedyard in March 2025. We saw the first Beef on Dairy steers feeding at the Vytelle® nodes to measure feed efficiency, see below. Top: Steers stick their heads through the bar to reach feed. The feed bunk is on a load bars and there is an RFID reader embedded in the rim of each feeding bunk. The animal has an RFID tag so changes to weight in the feed bunk (ie an animal eating) are attributed to their unique RFID tag. Bottom: Dr. John Basarab and Dr. Sandi Parr inspect the steers at Thorlakson Feedyards. Note the black coats on these Angus (AN) x Jersey (JE), AN x Holstein (HO) and AN x HOJE crosses!

Funding for the Sustainable Canadian Agricultural Partnership is provided by the governments of Canada and Alberta, cost-shared 60% federally and 49% provincially.