According to latest figures from the Irish Cattle Breeding Federation (ICBF) just over 100,000 or 88% of samples from the Beef Genomics Scheme have been returned to Weatherbys testing centre to date.

The ICBF says in total 113,000 ear tags have now been sent to farms with another 4,000 set to be delivered towards the end of this week.

Of the samples returned approx. 15,000 samples have been genotyped to date. The ICBF says the measure of quality of the genotypes (call rate) is 99% on average with only 0.4% of samples below the 90% call rate threshold. It commented that this is significantly better than what would be achieved in using hair sampling (3% samples below 90%).

The ICBF notes that the current focus is on genotyping stock bulls as it says these animals are the most informative for the purposes of the initial research.