Prime_Time_winter_2019

INDUSTRY TECHNOLOGY Untangling the Helix

Elisa Marques, Ph.D., MBA | Founder, AgFRONT | emarques@agfront.com

How to Develop Agrigenomics Products and Get the Best Prices

F or more than 10 years, we have heard of countless agrigenomics products hitting the market, in- cluding Angus 384 (re- tired), Clarifide®, Gen-

chip. Over time, technology has improved (and become more cost-effective), so we’ve selected more animals to genotype. We made some more predictions and those pre- dictions made better products. We are now weeding out the old mark- ers and making room for new real estate. That’s the process of creating new genom- ics products. As more animals are geno- typed and selection decisions are made using those products, there is a need to ag- gressively replace the markers that become fixed (no variation) in a population. We use that product until it comes time to add new markers for existing and addi- tional traits. Those are the same traits that took years of data collection efforts – feed efficiency, fertility, basically any trait that affects the producer’s bottom line. That’s how you create genomics products. This new shift is also the result of the new methodologies used for incorporating DNA information into genetic evaluation. The new methodology renders breed as- sociations more independent and no lon- ger bound by having to receive molecular breeding values (MBVs) from genomics companies. The consequence? You run your own evaluation with your own product and your own markers. There is another lesson here. When you create your own product, you also have leverage on a very important item – price. Purchasing power works. You look at your database, make estimates for what you need to genotype in the future and bring that number into the discussion. Here is a little exercise for anyone in the indus- try buying genomics tests. Look at your numbers for the past five years and make

eMax® and Igenity® Silver or Gold. We have also heard of the i50k, GGP-LD, GGP- HD, 150k and others. All of those products were created by genomics companies using knowledge gained from the very first chip – the Illumina Bov50k. Over the years, those companies poured their own research and development money into acquiring samples from the top indus- try bulls, as well as on genotyping and analyzing the data to create a specific prod- uct that filled a gap somewhere in the seed- stock or commercial sectors. But we are now seeing a shift. We are now entering an era where breed associa- tions are creating their own products. For years, breed associations have encouraged their members to collect phenotypic data and now, with their increased genotypes database as well as from their members’ routine genomics, the database keeps growing. Naturally, the question becomes, what do we do with all of this data? The answer: let’s create our own genomics product, and we will give it our own name. This is a trend that will continue as long as those in- vesting in genotypes also continue to invest in data collection. Product development will never go away because the need for products will never go away. For as long as we have problems, the products that promise solutions will continue to be in demand. In the begin- ning, we had little knowledge of what was important, so we threw everything on a

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Akaushi Prime Time • Winter 2019

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