Jenny Patterson spoke at the 2025 Red Deer Swine Technology Workshop (RDSTW) on October 8th, 2025, an annual event hosted by Alberta Pork. 

It was another successful meeting this year, with over 165 local producers and farm team members in attendance to hear presentations from industry experts and to network with those in the local industry.

Jenny’s topic was “The Fertility Quadrant” and it was highlighted in the Prairie Hog Country Magazine in their December 2025 edition. Her summary is below.

Set gilts up for Success

Developed in collaboration with Dr. Sergio Canavate from PIC NA, the “Fertility Quadrant” is a concept that integrates the four critical traits of gilt development. 

• Age at puberty
• Estrus at service
• 1st service weight
• 1st service age

It is important to note that while specific recommendations may vary by genetic supplier, the underlying principles remain the same, to support gilt development to maximize sow lifetime productivity.

These traits are not four independent targets, rather, they interact with each other to influence a gilt’s future productivity and retention. The concept also encourages producers to shift the focus from short term results, such as first litter size, toward a broader outcome of long-term productivity and retention over the lifetime of a female. 

The “Fertility Quadrant” concept recognizes that gilt development is also about achieving balance between breeding gilts with the optimal mix of these targets while managing the reality of meeting breeding targets and the challenges and/or opportunities within any given farm and production system. It requires on-farm decision making in achieving these targets, while understanding the tradeoffs when one or more benchmarks are not met. 

Ultimately, we believe by setting gilts up for success early, they will have a long and productive life in your herd.

https://www.prairiehogcountry.com/2025/12/03/alberta-pork-hosts-red-deer-swine-technology-workshop/

Jennifer Patterson

Sonja Allen, PhD Candidate, University of Alberta, During my recent trip to Hendrix Genetics Headquarters in the Netherlands, I had the opportunity to engage with researchers and gain insights directly relevant to my doctoral work, “Improving Sow Lifetime Productivity (SLP) and Pig Quality through Phenotypic and Genomic Analysis.” This The visit was both intellectually stimulating and practically valuable, offering perspectives that I will apply to my research.

I was fortunate to have one-on-one interactions with team leaders such as Ton Mallens, Database Manager at Hendrix Genetics. A key lesson from our meeting was the importance of rigorous data validation and regular checks of farm tools and equipment, such as scales, feeders, and software systems, to ensure accuracy in phenotypic and genotypic records. Beyond that, I gained valuable insights into Hypor breeding goals and the relevance of trait selection in ensuring animal welfare, productivity, and health through discussions with Abe Huisman, Director of Product Excellence, and Manuel Revilla, Animal Geneticist.

During my visit, I focused on analyzing growth curves in females and connecting these growth parameters, such as the inflection point, to parity-one reproductive performance. I had the opportunity to work closely with Marco Bink, the Team Lead for Genetics & Genomics. Our regular meetings focused on optimizing data pipelines, managing large phenotype datasets, and ensuring reproducibility of results. In addition to generating growth curves and applying mixed models in R for phenotypic analysis, we also focused on genomic data analysis by troubleshooting file formatting challenges using tools such as GCTA, BLUPF90+, and Linux environments.

I further interacted with phenotyping researchers whose focus on innovations such as digital phenotyping highlighted the future direction of swine research. 

My visit also coincided with Hendrix’s anniversary celebrations, which allowed me to gain deeper insights into the company’s history and its global presence, operating in more than 25 countries and supporting producers in over 100 countries worldwide.

This experience underscored the collaborative spirit of the international research community and reinforced the global impact of integrated phenotypic and genomic approaches to livestock improvement. It also helped me appreciate the importance of my project in advancing the swine sector by contributing to the production of high-quality pigs and pork products.

We are happy to report a successful Farm Fair 2025. There were great booths, livestock shows and events that make the annual event a great stop for anyone with an interest in livestock production. As a genomics research group, we think livestock shows are a great way to demonstrate the power of selection. Phenotypes like coat colour, coat texture and animal size are all things we can see very clearly with a heritable genetic basis (See below). While the focus was on cattle, we saw the same principles in practice with the rabbit show at Farm Fair as well. Of course, we were not there just to experience it, Livestock Gentec actively participated in the events at the Farm Forward event and at the University of Alberta ALES booth.

Dr. John Basarab Livestock Gentec CEO was an expert at the “Ask an Expert” event for the Farm Forward young livestock producers’ event at Farm Fair. The day was oriented towards young livestock producers and covered a lot of ground. Financial planning, biosecurity, and mental health were just among a few of the topics discussed. The audience was also treated to our University of Alberta colleague Dr. Edward Bork presenting on the transformational power of virtual fencing in livestock grazing. The “Ask an Expert” event was a little more personal, Dr. Basarab ran a round table discussion with smaller groups who asked their questions. The groups rotated after a short discussion to get a chance to talk with more experts. It made for a frantic hour, but we think there were many great discussions and questions. We found some conversations carried over into the lunch hour. The consensus from the attendees is Farm Forward was jam-packed, but incredibly informative over a broad number of topics. We received the following encouraging statement from the organizers on Dr. Basarab’s participation:

“It is vital to the entire livestock industry of Alberta that the next generation feels informed, supported and that the future for them in this industry is viable. This is why Farmfair International has placed an emphasis on educating and supporting young adults who are interested in careers in agriculture. We appreciate passionate educators like Dr. John Basarab, who come to the Farm Forward event to share their knowledge and encouragement with our audience.”

Pictured: Dr. John Basarab speaking to avid listeners at Farm Forward November 8, 2025.

This year we were at the ALES booth all four days (November 5-8). We had great conversations with producers, high school students, members of the public, funders, and collaborators. At the booth we displayed some plain language posters and materials on our NSERC Alliance project: “Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions from the Canadian Beef Industry through the Development and Adoption of Genomic Tools” and Sustainable Canadian Agricultural program  grant administered by Results Driven Agricultural Research (RDAR) program “Using genomics to improve the profitability and sustainability of Alberta’s beef industry”. To stimulate conversation around our material we brought a microscope with display showing dried and ground fecal material. The aim was to show what the fecal material looked like when we collected near infrared spectra on these samples (see more on fecal NIRS as a methane proxy here). As you can see from the pictures it is not immediately identifiable as cattle feces, so it made a good conversation starter when folks were wondering what they were looking at under the microscope. 

Overall the booth was a great opportunity to bring out the whole team and share our research activities.

We want to thank the University of Alberta ALES department, specifically, ALES research and innovation director Dr. Rene Dery and ALES Dean Dr. Rickey Yada, for the logistic and financial support in coordinating the event. It was also great to get to interact with other ALES research teams and learn more about their activities as well. We hope to come out next year and keep the tradition going.

Researchers with the University of Saskatchewan recently published: “Application of DNA parentage testing and EnVigour HX™ to evaluate bull prolificacy and heifer performance in beef cattle breeding programs in Western Canada”. In this study, sire assignments were conducted to determine bull ‘prolificacy’ scores. The genotypes were also analyzed for EnVigour HXTM scores to determine the hybrid vigour of these bulls and heifers –as a reminder to readers, EnVigour HXTM was launched by Livestock Gentec in 2017, the first “made-in-Canada” genomic tool for Canadian crossbred cattle producers,. The genomic values were compared to phenotypes assessing the relationships between hybrid vigour score and performance. While we recommend you read the article yourselves (Article link), we want to highlight that this study validates the relationship between genomically determined hybrid vigour score and lifetime productivity. 

We think this is excellent news for users and researchers alike. One key element in good science is repeatability. The results of this study, align well with our own findings when developing and validating EnVigour HXTM. In addition to providing confidence in the original results, this validation provides peer reviewed validation for the application of the EnVigour HXTM in a wider range of environments and genetic populations. Of course, the effectiveness of crossbreeding has been extensively established. However, this study specifically demonstrates the effectiveness of the EnVigour HX™ score and underlying analysis in a novel population showing broader applicability in the Western Canadian beef herd.

We would also like to point the readers to other validations conducted by research groups assessing EnVigour HXTM

Livestock Gentec continues to use EnVigour HXTM in our genomic value reports to producers. The value is useful itself as shown above. Further, the underlying genomic breed compositions are very informative to ensure an effective cross-breeding program. We also heavily weight EnVigour HXTM in the replacement heifer profit index score (RHPITM score). Fertility traits show low heritability meaning limited and slow progress through traditional selection. Incorporating heterosis or hybrid vigour with the weighted gEPDs to evaluate replacement heifers gives a balanced indication of her expected lifetime performance.

We are always excited to see our research and genomic tools evaluated by other research programs. The study also illustrates the importance of working with industry to generate industry buy-in to genomic tools. If you are a producer or researcher and want to learn more about genomic tools and Livestock Gentec projects for collaboration reach out to: lsgentec@ualberta.ca 

The Gentec Swine group is excited to showcase our latest results from our research collaboration with Hypor Hendrix Genetics Swine at the Banff Pork Seminar (January 6-8th, 2026). 

This collaborative work is focused on gilt development and sow lifetime productivity, with the goal of improving the competitiveness and sustainability of the Canadian pig industry.

Come by and see the posters and chat with the students.

BPS is always an excellent event for bringing the industry together. Our team will be represented by Michael Dyck, Jennifer Patterson, Sonja Allen, Kayla Patey and Morgan Rioch. We look forward to seeing you there!

There will also be a RDAR Research Showcase January 21, 2026. The event will be held in person at the Renaissance Edmonton Airport Hotel, with a virtual attendance option available. Please see link here for registration and event information. The event will include some interesting presentations and a fireside chat and Q&A with Deputy Minister Alberta Agriculture and Irrigation Jason Hale. After closing remarks there will be a poster session and networking event. Look for some of the Gentec team at the event.

Banff Pork Seminar Materials

Sonja Allen (PhD candidate)

“From Growth Curve to Breeding Decisions: Linking Gilt Development to Parity One Success”

Sonja’s poster highlights the opportunity to utilize the inflection point from gilt growth curve modeling as the key biological signal to time first breeding, which is essential for improving P1 outcome, sow retention, and profitability.  

Kayla Patey (MSc candidate)

“Identifying Birthweight Phenotype in Sows to Improve Replacement Gilt Management”

Kayla’s poster explores the possibility of earlier selection against sows with low litter birthweight phenotypes (LBWP) to predict future average litter birthweight patterns, supporting more efficient gilt selection and herd management.  

Morgan Rioch (BSc undergraduate student)

“Feed Intake in First Parity Lactation: Impact on Weight Loss and Subsequent Performance“

Morgan’s poster emphasizes the importance of feed intake during lactation in parity 1 sows as a critical component of parity 1 management, and how it impacts sow weight loss during first lactation, breeding efficiency and subsequent reproductive performance. 

We want to thank Morgan for all her hard work over the past two years as our undergraduate summer student.  Congratulations to Morgan as she finishes her Bachelor of Science in Animal Bioscience, at the University of Saskatchewan this December. Lucky for us, she won’t be going far, she will be joining the Gentec Beef Team to start her Masters of Science in January.

Take a look at some of Livestock Gentec’s material from the 2025 Banff Pork Seminar (BPS highlights 2025)

Karen Haugen-Kozyra president of Viresco Solutions Inc. was presented the 2025 ASTech Award for Agriculture and Agri-Food celebrated at the November 7, 2025 Gala in Calgary. Viresco Solutions Inc. won this award for their work on “Agri-Carbon Innovator Driving Sustainable Farming and Market Impact”. The award was presented by Bob Schulz, Professor, University of Calgary. See Karen at the Gala in the photo below. Join us in wishing a big congratulations to the Viresco Solutions Inc. team.

When they are not busy winning awards, Viresco Solutions Inc. is collaborating with Livestock Gentec in preparing a draft carbon offset protocol for cow-calf operations using genomic tools for the NSERC Alliance grant funded project “Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions from the Canadian Beef Industry through the Development and Adoption of Genomic Tools”. We are grateful for their expertise in leading us through this highly technical process. Specifically, Karen Haugen-Kozyra has very relevant experience in protocol development in Alberta through her involvement in developing the Fed cattle carbon offset protocol in the Alberta Offset system and Selecting for Low Residual Feed Intake in Beef Cattle protocol – both recognized protocols in the federal Offset System.  This previous experience gives us a huge advantage in avoiding pitfalls in the process. As recognized experts in this area, they are also a major help in contacting and pulling together the internationally recognized experts for the advisory committee for review of the scientific discussion document. They have been a huge asset to the project team and it is exciting to see their efforts recognized.

These were the 36th annual ASTech awards. ASTech or Alberta Science and Technology Leadership Foundation recognizes outstanding achievement in science or technology in Alberta since 1990. There were 20 award categories for 2025. Among these other categories, Dr. David Wishart, University of Alberta colleague and Gentec collaborator was the winner of the 2025 ASTech AI / ML & Quantum Award. We are very supportive of efforts to recognize excellence in science and technology in Alberta. We congratulate all the winners, and here is to another year of innovation in Alberta.

This has been an eventful year for us and looking back there have been a lot of highlights. Our leadership team: Dr. John Basarab CEO and Dr. Graham Plastow Former-CEO have a year-end message for our readers.

“When we reflect on the last 12 months we are amazed at how much has been achieved by the team including all our collaborators and industry partners.  These include partners across Canada as well as overseas. This has been built on the long-term support of the Faculty ALES and Department of AFNS along with the partnership researchers at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. Thanks to everyone for your support”

Pictured: Livestock Gentec team enjoying some Delicious Bits at the Olds College National Meat Training Centre shop after our site visit to TACLP feedlot to check on some project animals. Left to right: Dr. Chinyere Ekine-Dzivenu, Thi Lai To, and Dr. Everestus Akanno

Pictured: Dr. John Basarab Livestock Gentec CEO speaks to an engaged group at “Ask an Expert” during Farm Forward (Nov 8, 2025).

We’re thrilled to welcome Dr. Chinyere Ekine-Dzivenu back to the University of Alberta and Livestock Gentec. Dr. Ekine-Dzivenu is a quantitative geneticist and livestock genomics scientist with extensive experience applying advanced genetic and genomic tools to improve livestock productivity, profitability, and environmental sustainability. She earned her PhD and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Alberta, where she applied genomic tools to enhance feed efficiency and carcass quality in beef cattle.

In her new role she is advancing genetic and genomic tools to improve the sustainability, profitability, and environmental performance of beef production in Canada while contributing to teaching and fostering international partnerships and collaborations that link and ensure research innovations translate into practical on-farm impact, reflecting her passion for climate-smart, farmer-focused livestock improvement.

She remains seconded to the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), where she contributes to designing genomic selection strategies and digital platforms, data systems, and farmer support services, to drive continuous improvements in smallholder dairy systems across sub-Saharan and Asia enhancing productivity profitability, and climate-resilience.

Her dual appointment strengthens collaboration between both institutions, aligning research with practical on-farm applications, expanding funding opportunities, and supporting capacity building, technology transfer, and climate-smart livestock improvement in both hemispheres.

Dr. Ekine-Dzivenu is passionate about mentoring students, training the next generation of scientists, and fostering multidisciplinary collaborations that bridge research and industry, ensuring tangible benefits for farmers.

The Canadian agriculture industry is striving to balance both sustainability and productivity, targeting net zero emissions by 2050 and a doubling in agriculture productivity by 2030 (Government of Canada 2024). Within beef cattle production in Canada, 53-54% of greenhouse gases (GHG) are from enteric methane emissions (Basarab et al. 2012). Therefore, measurement of beef cattle methane emissions is critical for the understanding of how feed additives, vaccines, diet quality, hybrid vigour, genetic selection for feed efficiency and other best management practices for mitigating methane interact with economically important traits. We can measure these enteric gas emissions from animals in several ways. For example, the GreenFeed Emissions Monitoring (GEM) System™, takes measures of methane, carbon dioxide and hydrogen from respired and  eructated (burps) gases of cattle during voluntary visitations to the system. While the GEM system provides automated and noninvasive collection of enteric gases, it is expensive specialized equipment that limits its use to primarily research sites. As such, low cost proxy measures can allow for large data collections at multiple sites. Expanding the collection of enteric methane measures will improve methodologies for reducing GHG from beef production. This could be useful when applied to development and validation of genomic breeding values and other mitigation strategies. This article will give some detail on how we are approaching this problem in our project.

The project “Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions from the Canadian Beef Industry through the Development and Adoption of Genomic Tools” with Livestock Gentec CEO Dr. John Basarab as PI, has been mentioned in previous articles [In the field Dec 2024; Livestock Gentec March 2025 Research Update; June 2025 NSERC pilot]. A  project goal is to develop a methane emission prediction equation using Near Infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) conducted on dried and ground fecal samples. 

NIRS measures the absorption of energy across the near infrared wavelengths (700-2500nm) of the electromagnetic spectrum. The absorption value from NIRS at certain wavelengths are associated with bend and stretch characteristics of various chemical bonds in a sample. We can use this variation to develop equations that predict useful attributes of the sample. For example: digestibility of of feed sample, moisture content in grain, protein content in milk, and fat content in ground meats have all shown good prediction and form the basis for industry quality testing.

In our case, we are analyzing NIRS of fecal samples to predict methane emissions. Enteric gas emissions in beef cattle are related to the fermentation of feed by rumen microbes. For example, archea microorganisms are a group of methanogens in the rumen associated with methane production. We believe we can utilize these spectra to predict GHG enteric emissions, based on the composition of metabolites in the feces. Project collaborator Dr. Amélie Vanlierde from Walloon Agricultural Research Centre in Belgium conducted similar research with fecal NIRS and observed a moderate prediction accuracy of fecal NIRS and beef and dairy cattle enteric emissions (Vanlierde et al. 2022).

NIRS data are rich in information about sample component composition. However, the data can be noisy with interference caused by factors unrelated to composition. These factors include attributes such as particle size and moisture content. Our mitigation for this is consistent methodology across sites and fecal processing. For fecal processing, samples are dried and ground to one mm to improve the consistency of the material for spectra collection. We also conduct a series of mathematical transformations to spectra to mitigate these noise factors. Both physical and statistical processing can be applied to improve the quality of NIR spectra data for analysis.

NIRS can collect absorption values every 0.5nm wavelength. This means there can be as many as 4200 absorption values for each sample. There is rich literature exploring the best statistical methods and evaluation techniques for NIRS data analysis. Researchers commonly use Partial Least Squares Regression (PLSR) to link an attribute to NIRS spectra. We can validate results with cross-validation or a training-test set split approaches. 

Figure 1: pre and post transformation spectra following SNV-D + first derivative transformation.

Finally, there are questions about the scalability of fecal NIRS as a proxy. Fecal drying and grinding, along with laboratory grade NIRS equipment which are expensive create barriers to data collection. These are good practices for the best quality data; however, there is value in exploring a more field-ready approach to expand the scope of potential data collection. To approach this goal, we are also collecting spectra using a portable NIRS on fresh fecal samples. In an ideal case, this would allow us to collect this data ‘chute-side’ at high volume.

Currently we have collected over 1350 spectra on 267 animals across four trials at three sites (Roy Berg Kinsella Research Station; Lakeland College and the Maritime Bull Test Station). Trials at Olds College Technology Access Centre for Livestock Production led by Sean Thompson are also underway. We will continue to run trials through 2028 and plan to add data from Dr. Gabriel Ribeiro at the University of Saskatchewan. These trials will include cows, heifers, bulls, native steers, and beef-on-dairy steers. Research sites will use a variety of feeds including high forage-based rations and high-grain finishing diets. This will help to produce a large dataset with high variability. The large and diverse dataset will help us to evaluate  these NIRS based enteric emission predictions.

Figure 2: Labelled fecal samples collected from Lakeland College by Dr. Obioha Duranna and team.

 Citations:

Basarab, J., V. Baron, O. López-Campos, J. Aalhus, K. Haugen-Kozyra, E. Okine. 2012.

Greenhouse gas emissions from calf- and yearling-fed beef production systems, with and without the use of growth promotants. Animals, 2:195–220.

Government of Canada 2024. Sustainable Development Goal 2: Zero hunger. https://www.canada.ca/en/employment-social-development/programs/agenda-2030/zero-hunger.html  [accessed August 27, 2025].

Vanlierde, A, F. Dehareng, A. Mertens, M. Mathot, A. Lefevre, et al 2022. Estimation of methane eructed by dairy and beef cattle using faecal near-infrared spectra. 73. Annual Meeting of the European Federation of Animal Science, EAAP, Sep 2022, Porto, Portugal. pp.333. ⟨hal-04792528⟩

Mark Johnson of OSU Extension recently published an article on the economics of herd expansion where he provides an excellent overview of the current value of replacement heifers and the economic drivers behind expansion decisions.

He highlights that while calf prices are at record highs, rebuilding the cow herd has been slow. Drought, high interest rates, and the capital required to purchase or raise breeding females continue to hold producers back. Yet, from a breakeven perspective, this may actually be the best time in years to add new females—today it takes about 2.75 calves to pay for a bred heifer, compared to 4.5 on average, and as many as 9 back in 2015.

 For those looking to expand their herd, we advocate using genomic tools to improve profitability and sustainability. Tools developed by Gentec, such as EnVigour HX™ (which measures retained heterozygosity to maximize hybrid vigor), and genomic indexes for heifer fertility and lifetime productivity  (Replacement Heifer Profit IndexTM and Feeder Profit IndexTM), allow producers to identify replacement females with the greatest potential for fertility, resilience, and long-term profitability.

By combining today’s favorable economic signals with genomics-driven selection, producers can reduce risk, improve herd productivity, and ensure that every replacement investment pays off well into the future.

Read Mark’s full article here:

https://www.angus.org/angus-media/angus-beef-bulletin/abb-extra/2025/08/fp_current-value-of-replacement-heifers

Contact Gentec today to learn how these tools can fit into your herd expansion strategy.

lgentec@ualberta.ca