Charolais society Breedplan contract.

The British Charolais Cattle Society's (BCCS) council of management has agreed a five-year contract with the Agricultural Business Research Institute (ABRI) to upgrade its registration and genetic evaluation system service provider to Breedplan technology.

Breedplan, which uses the world's most advanced genetic evaluation system to produce Estimated Breeding Values of recorded cattle for a range of traits, will enable BCCS members to take ownership of registrations and performance recording with the help of a state-of-the-art web enabled database.

In the future, BCCS members will have a choice of registering their cattle: by post, telephone contact with the society office, or via the internet.

Transfer of BCCS data will take place throughout the latter part of 2006 in readiness to go live with Breedplan from March 2007. "We have spent several months considering various genetic evaluation systems before finally deciding on Breedplan which has been developed specifically for beef cattle breeders, it is now operating in 10 different countries, and it has close to one million registrations, including 65% of UK pedigree beef sector," explains BCCS chairman Jimmy Wilson.

"Breedplan has developed a critical mass and subsequent cost efficiencies; it is demonstrating flexibility with its tailor made package compatible to UK conditions; and its 200 staff members including geneticists and software specialists operate a round the clock support service. We are confident that Breedplan will provide our members, and also prospects, with the potential to accelerate genetic progress in their herds, together with objective information on the cattle they sell to both fellow pedigree breeders and to commercial farmers."