FUTURE TECHNOLOGIES IN CATTLE-BREEDING

In the future there will be special dairy farms with herd size of 300- 500 cows and therefore healthy and stable 10.000 kg cows are needed wi th high milk contents and high feed efficiency. Future breeding strate gies will be based on this aim. Similar to pig breeding the cattle bre eding organisations will establish the pyramide of nucleus, multiplyer and production. Today, the nucleus of bull dams are located in 20 her ds. By using modern techniques more informations for breeding decision will be available arid therefore functional traits as udder disease, birth weight, calving losses and stayability can be used. The progeny test system will be changed to bigger test farms to reduce the costs f or test bulls. Reproductive techniques as embryo transfer and in vitro fertilisation are standards in the breeding programmes. Embryo clonin g is a Future technique to start hybrid programmes in dairy cattle. Mo lecular techniques will be used for gen diagnostic as BLAD, DUMPS, MHS . The german research project ''Genomanalysis In cattle'' is based on udder disease, fertility and marker assisted selection, resembling new breeding strategies. For using gen transfer in the cattle industry we need more research, sponsoring and acceptance to establish these meth ods for desease resistance in cows.