Head Shepherd
Mark Ferguson from neXtgen Agri brings you the latest in livestock, genetics, innovation and technology. We focus on sheep and beef farming in Australia and New Zealand and the people doing great things in those industries.
Head Shepherd
Genotype x Environment Interactions and More with Dr Sonja Dominik
Our guest this week is Dr Sonja Dominik, a research scientist specialising in sustainability indicators at CSIRO in Armidale.
Sonja's career began with an undergraduate degree in Germany, majoring in animal breeding and genetics. Her passion for genetics led her to undertake research work in Australia, where she developed a deep appreciation for the country, its people and its livestock.
Sonja moved to Australia to complete her doctoral studies, looking at genotype x environment interaction in merino sheep in Western Australia. Sonja looked into how the stud environment differs from the commercial environment and whether the performance of rams shifts between these distinct husbandry systems.
Sonja joined CSIRO 21 years ago and she has been a part of pioneering research projects. Notably, she worked on the genetics of methane emission in sheep, breech strike resistance, worm resistance and much, much more.
In this episode, we discuss Sonja's PhD topic, the genotype x environment interaction, the impact of digital technology and the work she is currently involved in. This includes establishing a "Lifetime Animal Wellbeing Index" to objectively demonstrate animal welfare in the industry, assisting in meeting both consumer demands, and also import requirements globally.
Sonja Dominik has had a truly remarkable career so far and this podcast highlights the importance of research and technology in shaping the future of farming, a lot of which Sonja has been involved with!
Head Shepherd is brought to you by neXtgen Agri International Limited. We help livestock farmers get the most out of the genetics they farm with. Get in touch with us if you would like to hear more about how we can help you do what you do best: info@nextgenagri.com.
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Welcome to the Head Shepherd podcast. I'm your host, mark Ferguson, ceo at Next Gen Agri International, where we help livestock managers to get the best out of their stock. I want to take this opportunity to thank our friends at MSD Animal Health in Orflex for sponsoring Head Shepherd again this season, and I'm also excited to introduce our mates at Heinegger as brand new sponsors of the show. Msd in Orflex, or perhaps better known as Cooper's Animal Health in Australia, offer one of New Zealand, australia's, largest livestock product portfolios, with a comprehensive suite of animal health and management products connected through identification, traceability and monitoring solutions. Like us, they see how the wealth and breadth of information born out of this podcast can help their men and their farming clients achieve their mission of the science of healthier animals.
Mark Ferguson :Heinegger will need a little introduction to our audience. A market leader and one-stop shop for wool harvesting and animal fibre removal, together with an expanding range of agricultural products and inputs, the Heinegger name is synonymous with quality, reliability and precision. The Heinegger team have a deep understanding of livestock agriculture, backed by Swiss engineering and a family business dedicated to manufacturing the best. It's fantastic to have both of these sponsors supporting us and bringing Head Shepherd to you each week and now it's time to get on with this week's episode. Welcome back to Head Shepherd. This week we've got Sonja Dominic on the channel. How are you, sonja?
Sonja Dominik :Very well, thank you for having me.
Mark Ferguson :Excellent. I'm sitting here with my broken headphones and my half plugged in with a fluoro cord, which is anyway. We've done this, we've done Head Shepherd in all sorts of situations, so I'm actually got good internet today, but just a terrible setup. Anyway, we'll see how we go your research scientists there at CSR, in Armadale, in sustainability indicators. But I guess the reason I contacted in the first instance was because you used to have a career in genetics and did some interesting work back in the day. So we might start with how you ended up, maybe how you ended up in genetics, how you ended up at Zoro, but yeah, I guess we're that career started and then we'll wander through the life of Sonja after that.
Sonja Dominik :Yeah, thanks very much. My career basically started I'm a townie, so actually not from a property. So I did my undergraduate degree in Germany in agriculture with a major in animal breeding, in genetics, and it was just an interest that I took basically from family holidays. It sounds really bizarre, but I really started to love the rural industries and was really keen to make a difference in my career. As part of my undergraduate degree I did a practical experience in Baud Desert in Australia, so that's 100 kilometers southeast of Brisbane, on a beef cattle property, and absolutely loved Australia and also got in contact with the University of New England. So some of the researchers there Julius Vanderwerf and Brian Kinghorn, who are well known in the animal breeding circles, I got in contact with and so that set out my goal for what I wanted to do.
Sonja Dominik :Once I finished my undergraduate degree I wanted to do my doctoral studies in Australia. Yeah, there were a few ups and downs but eventually got there, which was great, and did my PhD in genotype by environment interaction in marina sheep in Western Australia. Again, it was a bit of a learning curve because sheep, from my German background, was probably one of the industries I didn't know much about but really enjoyed spending some time in Western Australia as part of my PhD and looking at the effect of stud environment versus commercial environment and then looking if the performance of Rames shifted between these different husbandry systems. After that I had enough of research for a while and moved to South Australia and spent a couple of years with the sheep industries development center, which was with the South Australian government, and it was fantastic. To actually start to be able to translate my academic learnings into some useful content.
Sonja Dominik :For farmers Was a great networking building opportunity and working with some great consultants in South Australia. It was a fantastic experience. Then I got the opportunity to join CSRO quite a while back. I've been with SRO now for 21 years.
Mark Ferguson :We don't need to age each other on these things.
Sonja Dominik :I did first my postdoctoral fellowship on the gene mapping flock in Armadale, which was a marine or omnicross flock to look for major genes for production, parasite resistance, yeah, and all went from there. So I got a research scientist position and changed industries at times. So I worked for a while in fish, salmon, oysters, abalone, prawns but then back later on with cattle and sheep and probably one of the last projects I worked was with Hatton Odie from New South Wales DPI on the genetics of methane emission in sheep. Yeah, which is now quite a big research effort at UNE, which is great.
Mark Ferguson :Excellent. So, yeah, quite the progression around Australia there, which is good getting a good look around. And yeah, I guess maybe we do jump back to your PhD, because that's a question I get asked all the time how possibly could a number that's generated a fleece fate, for example, generated in under great conditions in somewhere in a study environment actually possibly translate to something that's out in the wheat belt or out in the pastoral zone? And I guess, while you answer the question, did you find any genetic-bioreenvironmental interactions? So by that you would look for size that re-ranked under different environments.
Sonja Dominik :That's right. That's right. Yeah, so there was 800 size were common across the two different environments and I'm just really intrigued that you that that topic of genotype environment interaction has always been by my patients since my PhD and it's mind boggling that it's still a really unexplored area where we haven't been able to find any approaches, Like even with genomics, DNA sequence. There still haven't been any more tangible approaches to informing genotype environment interaction than what we had back then. It's really mind boggling and still, yeah, great to hear that it's still drossy interest because it's an issue that often it's more anecdotal evidence, because I think the difference is to actually be able to determine a true genotype environment interaction. You will have to have that comparison of the REMS performance in the two different environments, whereas producers might see the performance of one animal in one environment and then the other, so you don't see a re-ranking if you just have one animal. You need two at least to see that re-ranking. But nevertheless, so there were.
Sonja Dominik :Life weight was probably the strongest genotype environment interaction. So I looked at it from the point of view as a correlated trait to see if it was actually the same trait in a commercial versus a study environment or if there were other genetic mechanisms underlying the expression in the different environments. The strongest one was for body weight, around 0.6. The others were, I think, fiber diameter, I think, was 0.8, and the others weren't lower than that, Looked at stable strength. So just a few quality traits as well. Clean, please. White was also not that strongly affected.
Sonja Dominik :But the question that I also asked was there was sort of a rule of some that can't actually remember the reference, but someone said anything above 0.8 is not going to be of economic importance, and so I wanted to investigate that in terms of a selection index. So if you have a number of traits that are affected to a different extent, does it actually affect your genetic progress that you make? If you do make your selection in a study environment and then use a particular aim in your commercial environment and yeah, I sort of modeled different extent of correlations and if they are extensive, then certainly it can have quite a large effect on how overall meeting a breeding objective. But yeah, certainly it was not anything that I evaluated as a huge effect that would be of concern in selecting your aims, that you have to run them really hard to ensure that it's an exact expression of what you will expect in the commercial environment.
Mark Ferguson :Yeah, and I guess that's the part of what people see as GBE or GenExpo. Environment interactions is more some traits aren't expressed in some environment. So that's sort of what needs to be understood at some, at least at some point some time in the future is is it just that those traits are never expressed? So in a commercial environment, well, I guess you change rainfall or something and fleece rot, for example, gets expressed in some environments where it won't, you know that's not GBE, that's just under some environments that the GBE doesn't get expressed because the environment doesn't allow it to.
Mark Ferguson :But yeah, the interesting finding there around weight, and I guess just to make sure everyone's on the same page, so if that number was one, the sign is talking about those decimals, so one would be 100% correlated, which you don't ever see. But so the lower that number is, the less the two traits were correlated across those two different environments and so a 0.6 for live weight means that something else is going on and I guess here I was spruiking how much I could translate my academic language to practical outcomes and taking taking me up on that.
Mark Ferguson :That's all good, yeah, but it is an interesting area and, I think, one that will continue. And I guess the battle is that you sort of need to almost and I only ever found one paper that actually did select under different environments and then took animals back and forth from those environments, which I think is probably the true when you can obviously model these things, but it's. We don't get to do 20 year experience, anymore experiments anymore. Back in the 50s and 60s we could have put that in a sorrow budget, nowhere else at all, and run up for 15 years and no one would have asked the questions. But now that sort of stuff doesn't happen.
Mark Ferguson :But, yeah, if you could, almost if you could, select for 20 years, start with a split of flock and then select on a different environment, I think that that would be interesting to see. Yeah, what comes to the fore and whether you end up selecting a different genotope. Yeah, anyway, but there's, yeah, it's an intriguing area. I guess we know enough that mostly, as far as we, yeah, like lots of animals, rank the same across those different environments. So breeding go is definitely work, and the site, and obviously the better we understand these things, the better we can correct for these things and therefore make the breeding go even more accurate.
Mark Ferguson :It's kind of the need to understand these things, but it's, yeah, it fascinates me really and as much as I guess GBO a bit more trade expression and always is other traits that we don't express by good nutrition that can be expressed. I guess that's sort of where my PhD got underway and, yeah, I don't think we got any close. We didn't try and answer GBOE but certainly try to understand how trade expression changed across those environments. But we can talk about that forever, but people would definitely get bored. I've already been accused of this being a good cure for sleep problems at once this week, but I hope not this podcast.
Mark Ferguson :I'll leave all my friendly staffs, that's all good. If they saw me looking at this boy hanging out my ear, they would definitely have good reason to it, I guess. If we, yeah, so obviously genetics for a big part of your career and then, as Sorrow sort of changes focus, you change with it, and so now I guess moved into into, I guess, challenges of today, sustainability and all the things that are around that, so I guess maybe just that career progression for young scientists out there, obviously there's that step into management that some people want to take, some people don't want to take, and obviously in research organisations it's something you need to consider. So maybe, yeah, how and why you sort of well, yeah, I guess, the process you went through from moving from science career to more into management and then a combination. But that would be an interesting, interesting to hear your thoughts on that.
Sonja Dominik :Yeah, the first opportunity I had to step into management role was just an acting role for six months, so that was actually a really good opportunity to test my suitability and my capability in management roles and I did really enjoy it. So I do enjoy working with people and ensuring that people have a great workplace to come to and enable people to do their best work. So I really did enjoy it. So, yeah, step through different roles, looking after the livestock programme. Then we merged with aquaculture and within that merged programme I took on first group leader role for looking after genetics, genomics, across the two topic areas and then moved into sustainability and welfare. So all the methane work was part of that. Also. Animal welfare, yes.
Sonja Dominik :And then again stepped into the research director role for the livestock and aquaculture programme, again in an acting role, for about 12 months, and following that I was actually really keen to develop more, the strategic development of a particular area and there was the opportunity within an initiative in SRO to take that role to build a programme of work around sustainability credentials and also within the agriculture and food business unit to basically create a network within the business unit across others around sustainability credentials and standards. So I've been really enjoying that for the last 10 months or so. Been a steep learning curve, since it really was not my background and would hardly call myself an expert in that area now, but yeah, definitely it's been very interesting, so relevant and again actually helping industry to make some sense around a space which is really complex. I'm enjoying it.
Mark Ferguson :Excellent and yeah, I can't remember when we contacted you, but it's a while ago when you've been flat out since.
Mark Ferguson :So it's good that you've obviously come up for air at the moment and you've threw some of that learning curve. A quick interruption here to remind you of Head Shepherd Premium and our consulting services at Next to Niagara International. If you love this podcast and want to hear more of them, visit thehubnextanagricom and sign up for Head Shepherd Premium and get an extra podcast each week. If you're listening to this and thinking you really do want to maximise the journey going of your lifestyle and feel more confident around the decisions you're making on farm, then send me an email at mark at nextanagricom and we'll get in touch and see where that takes us. One of the things that we mentioned before we got going was you did some work on the Lifetime Animal Wellbeing Index, and that's intriguing to me. Obviously, we do lots of things on farm, whether it's management or genetics, trying to improve animal welfare, and for both, well, for all good reasons really. So it'd be interesting what that work involved and where it's going.
Sonja Dominik :There was some work that a team of thorough scientists did for Meet and Life Stock Australia last year and it was around the scope and governance of a Lifetime Animal Wellbeing Index, and part of the project was engaging with stakeholders in interviews. That's not just industry, but also we had a researcher workshop to basically scope out what could that look like? Does it actually make sense? And probably one of the first messages we heard very strongly is you just can't fit animal welfare into a single number. It will be impossible, in particular in Australia with the diversity of production systems, to actually describe animal welfare in a single index number. I mean, as a geneticist, you cannot think, oh, we've done that before. We've described pretty complex circumstances in a single number.
Sonja Dominik :Yeah, definitely took that on board and moved away from scoping out that approach of a single number but basically developing. How could we actually have a phased approach of building on current existing data sources that can describe animal well-being, getting people on board, making it actually an easy option if it started it's collected already to use that in the first instance and then build on that with more complex approaches, more detailed information. So at the beginning you might start with flock information, but individual animal information would do have the opportunity with the NLIS in cattle, some states in sheep as well and to actually have individual animal information, certainly as increasing the level of detail and then also increasing the level of technology that might actually help capture that information, to ensure that with the increased detail it doesn't mean increased workload in populating that detail. So that was sort of the phased approach that we set out as a suggestion so that it is available on the MLA website. There's also quite an extensive literature review associated with that around global schemes that currently exist internationally.
Mark Ferguson :What's the intent? Is that to better inform some of those sort of schemes, or is it to the literature review. Oh no, I guess the entire the piece of work. Where would that end up? I guess, if you're a farmer listening, what's that mean for you in the future?
Sonja Dominik :For welfare. It's definitely considered one of the barriers to market access, retaining market access or accessing new markets. I mean in the free trade agreements in Europe. I mean Europe not being necessarily a high volume export market but for providing a very Australian centric view here. But it's a high value market and, yeah, with you capturing animal welfare in their free trade agreement they haven't actually detailed yet what that should look like. And also the UK together with antimicrobial resistance. They are areas where there's already been pushed back in the UK on that from UK producers because they feel that the Australian production environment is not providing the animal welfare standards that a UK environment provides with, for example, the length of transport or other aspects, probably the limited ability to monitor animals in an extensive environment.
Sonja Dominik :So there are questions, once these free trade agreements get detailed, how that then actually translates into equivalent measures between countries to ensure that it meets the welfare standards of the importing country. And so, yeah, there's definitely the need to objectively demonstrate animal welfare and that's why this report was compiled in the first instance to see, well, can we actually maybe use an index approach to MLA was thinking similar to MSA, which was quite a big success to meet standard Australia where, yeah, you could predict meat eating quality quite well. So that was the initial thought how that might develop. But I think it's going to be a much more structured framework around the five domains, which is the most recent. There used to be the five freedoms of animal welfare, freedom of hunger, thirst, disease, pain so, yeah, there's this normal behavior, that's right, and with the five domains having more of a component on the mental wellbeing as well. And, yeah, the global frameworks are very much framed around that and I think that will be the approach that we'll have to take as well.
Mark Ferguson :Yeah, cool, interesting. Yeah, it's important that we remain relevant in that discussion as markets change their requirements and obviously we don't need to feed the world, we just need to feed the wealthy. So finding ways to meet those standards is important, I guess. If you look at your role now, what are the big challenges that you as a research group, or you as a group, are tackling now or would like to tackle in the future? What are the things that you think are going to underpin across Australia going forward? That's a big question.
Sonja Dominik :Yeah, I certainly think that digital is going to drive a lot of the challenges that agricultural industries face. Yeah, and I think that's all the reporting of sustainability, credentials and other compliance processes. To be able to connect data streams, reducing double handling of data, using it for multiple purposes and enabling automated population of compliance protocols or, say, credentials, for example, is certainly where I see their big drivers. That will enable industry to work more effectively and efficiently, acknowledging that the whole tech space is super busy and moves so fast as well. So for producers to actually invest in tech that helps them with some of these processes can always be a big question mark. What do I actually use and is it going to be outdated? Is it actually going to provide me with an advantage that makes it worse to cost?
Mark Ferguson :Yeah, yeah, that's definitely a challenge that we face and I guess to me the landscape is going to change a lot. It's just hard to see which bit changes first and how it all comes together. But we know that a farm is going to look a lot different than it does today and as today does from 50 years prior. But I guess I think, like everywhere in society, the next change will be bigger than the previous change, as it always is. But it's an intriguing area and that need to, particularly here in where I'm sitting today in New Zealand, where compliance measures are definitely in front of what's happening in Australia, there's definitely more pressure on whether it's nutrients or welfare or environmental, whatever it is. It's generally a lot of that.
Mark Ferguson :Heat is on and I guess, going through the pain of where you've got lots of different compliance processes that don't talk to each other. So you've got three or four different assurance schemes coming up your driveway or asking very similar questions and all that sort of crap. But obviously this makes farmers very drawn to spot this conversation. But, like you say, market access and for all of the reasons, that's where we're going and we, like it or not, we get led by Europe. If Europe does something, we just do it in 10 years time or whatever the lag is, we generally follow suit because that's where we sell a lot of our product. So, yeah, it's intriguing here. I don't think it can happen without digital. Like you say, it's going to be an interesting time ahead. But I think I guess a lot of these things it's about finding those win-wins, isn't it? Where a piece of data is useful for a farmer is also useful for someone who needs to send that information up the chain.
Sonja Dominik :So one initiative that CSRO is involved in is the Australian Agricultural Data Exchange, which is it's going to be a federated data platform for the exchange of agricultural data. Obviously, we'll have to consider considerations around the data privacy, but yeah, something like that, I think, is clearly a fantastic mechanism that could help with streamlining data processes for multiple purposes.
Mark Ferguson :Yeah, yeah. Cool Question now left for you. But what's been the favourite part of your career so far?
Sonja Dominik :I don't know. I've always been enjoying what I've been doing. I do like taking on new challenges, so it is great to work in an area that you know and with teams that you know. But I've always enjoyed like even moving from sheep to aquaculture species, just the subtle differences in husbandry systems that you actually have to consider in your breeding programs, and just that continual learning with, with expelting myself to different challenges. That's what I've enjoyed most. Probably, in addition, is when your research actually becomes something that is applied, which in genetics can be challenging to have that real oversight if that actually happened. But, yeah, in the aquaculture space, I was part of the team that introduced genomic selection for one of the disease traits in Atlantic salmon and that is now what they do. So that's super exciting. Which, yeah, to actually have knowledge that what you've done has been applied and that's actually contributing, that's super exciting, of course.
Mark Ferguson :Yeah, there's a lot of very rewarding that process and, as you say, often you're one cog in a big process, so you can't always get attribution, but I guess we all know who's done each bit of the work and particularly, and maybe in livestock genetics, there's lots of stuff going on, so no individual does. But, yeah, whenever you see or someone tells you that they heard something from you and they've put it in place and it's made their life better or made them more cash or made their sheep happier or whatever it is, it's yeah, they're the good days. That's what makes up for the not so exciting days where collecting data and all that sort of fun stuff. Yeah, that's been an interesting chat. So, under anything we've missed in your, anything else we should be covering, I think I think we've done well, covering my 25 years of research career.
Mark Ferguson :Yeah, we were. Just I just got off a call with the. I'm pretty sure we must have met at AAABG conference I just got off with. Aaabg is coming here in a couple of years time, so somehow I've ended up on the committee for that. So then that was would have been about 25 years ago, I reckon. So anyway, time flies when you're having fun playing and research. But, yeah, many thanks for your time and I appreciate you being flat out. So I look forward to catching up one day in the future probably not at a genetics conference, now that you've jumped ship from the good side.
Sonja Dominik :So I still attend AAABG conference as an invited speaker. Well, thank you very much for having me.
Mark Ferguson :Excellent Thanks on you, all the best, thank you. Thanks again to our mates at Heinegger, who are proud world leaders in the manufacturing and supply professional sheep shearing and clipping equipment. They understand that their customers rely on the quality and performance of their products each and every day. Also, thanks to our friends at MSD Animal Health and Orflix, they offer an extensive livestock portfolio focused on animal health and management, all backed up by exceptional service. Both of these companies are wonderful supporters of the Australian and New Zealand livestock industries and we thank them for sponsoring the Hedgehammer podcast.
