Thailand has an estimated 807,000 farmers running 6.9M head of beef cattle and 1.8M farmers running 4.7M head of buffaloes. The demand for beef and buffalo meat is increasing faster than it can be produced. The gap is being filled by slaughtering cattle and buffalo which have been illegally imported from other countries. Around 40% of slaughterings are of these illegal imports. This is depriving Thai farmers of potential income and making the control of livestock disease more difficult than it should be.

The Department of Livestock Development (DLD) in Thailand has given a high priority to research into genetic improvement of beef cattle and buffalo and to dissemination of improved germplasm throughout these industries. The DLD runs nucleus herds of beef cattle and/or buffalo on its five (5) livestock breeding centres and thirty one (31) breeding stations. Animals in these herds have growth rate and fertility measured to assist in selecting the best animals for breeding. The DLD has established 135 multiplier herds of cattle and is in the process of increasing this to 350 herds.

To the extent that the DLD plays the key role in the breeding and importation of improved beef cattle and buffalo, these DLD programs have a profound influence on rate of genetic improvement and profitability of the national beef cattle and buffalo herds.

The project involves research staff from the Agricultural Business Research Institute (ABRI), the University of New England's (UNE) Department of Animal Science and the Animal Genetics and Breeding Unit (AGBU) collaborating with the Thai personnel in the DLD who are responsible for beef cattle and buffalo improvement.

The project is oversighted by a Co-ordination Committee including Dr Rapeepong Vongdee (Director General, DLD), Ms Ancharlie Na-Chiangmai and Senior DLD personnel, Mr P.A. Rickards (Managing Director, ABRI), Mr Jack Allen and Mr J. Croaker as Northern Australian delegate, Dr J. Copland (ACIAR) and Dr Hans Graser (Director, Animal Genetics and Breeding Unit).

This project provides a model for national genetic improvement schemes for other countries in the region. It is proposed to hold a workshop on the project in 2001 to assist other countries understand and adopt the technologies being researched.

Significant amounts of historic, paper recorded data has now been transferred onto PCs and subsequently loaded onto the central computer system based in Bangkok. The computerised data has been used to research genetic parameter estimations, body measure correlations to weight and training Thai scientists in data manipulation and research methods.

Training Thai researchers continues as a main priority with sessions on data entry and manipulation, maintaining central data base systems and DFREML and SASS genetic parameter estimation procedures. Three Thai scientists were also funded by the Project to attend the 6th World Congress on Genetics Applied to Livestock Production and three to the AAAP conference in Sydney. Trial GROUP BREEDPLAN evaluations have been run on the Brahman and Buffalo data using the genetic parameters estimated off the data base.

A breeding workshop was run in 1999 which trained 25 Thai scientists to make better breeding decision and use of the computerised data base more effectively - a very significant resource for Thai animal breeding in particular and Asia in general.