Interactions between growth early in life and sire-genotype
A major objective of our research has been to determine the extent to which genotype may interact with nutrition early in life to influence subsequent growth, carcass, yield and beef-quality characteristics. To achieve this objective, our research included offspring of Piedmontese (a high muscling,high-birth-weight breed homozygous for a non-functional mutation in myostatin) and Wagyu (a high marbling and lower birth weight breed) bulls. Perhaps surprisingly, no interactions between sire-genotype and growth early in life were evident for any production parameters reported here or presented by Greenwood et al. (2006).