We can build them stronger ... expert breeding turns a once-sleepy farm business into a global brand of supercows.

More than 400 people gathered recently in a neoclassical ballroom at the Copacabana Palace, a posh, seaside hotel in Rio de Janeiro. They drank Italian wine and nibbled brie brochettes before heading into a giant, chandeliered dining room, where camera crews jockeyed for angles of the dais and a cherry lectern.

The women, in gala dresses and jewels, headed for the tables while men in suits, their hair slicked back with gel, milled about the floor, making small talk beneath giant screens broadcasting a digital slideshow of the evening's stars--white-haired, humpbacked cattle.

The Opera and Bilara Auction, named after two of Brazil's most prolific bovines, is the biggest night of the year for the country's growing ranks of wealthy cattle breeders. But the auction is not for cattle, so much as their potential offspring. By the end of the evening, ranchers shelled out nearly US$1.7 million for 33 fertilized cattle eggs.

Embryos, eggs, and sperm are the stuff of a booming cattle genetics business in Brazil, one of a host of high-tech areas that ranchers have embraced to catapult the country to the top of the global beef industry. Deff implementation of breeding technologies in recent years, combined with advances in nutrition and pasture management, has made Brazil home to the largest cattle herd on the planet and last year the world's leading exporter of beef.

The science behind the technology--including artificial insemination, embryo transfers, and nutritional supplements, among other advances--is not entirely new. Nor is Brazil a newcomer to the beef business; with a total land area bigger than the continental United States, the country's vast pastures have long nourished all manner of livestock.

But a cultural shift among the country's ranchers has transformed a once risk-averse industry into one of the most aggressive agricultural sectors in the world. "There was a change in the mindset here," says Kepler Filho, executive director of Empresa Brasileira de Pesquisa Agropecuaria (Embrapa), the government agency that drives much of Brazil's agricultural research. "Ranchers began to realize technology could help improve their herds and make their businesses more efficient."

Their newfound tech savvy is a response to the growing demand for Brazilian beef. The boom began in the late 1990s, when a devaluation of the real made exports more attractive to foreign buyers. Since then, sales of Brazilian beef have tripled in five years to 1.35 million tons in 2004, according to government figures.

To help meet the demand, ranchers began looking for ways to produce more meat. Better breeding, they discovered, would enable them to do so because it produced stronger animals and cut the time it takes for cattle to reach slaughter weight from four years to nearly two. "Breeding has improved the productivity of the animals and the quality of the meat," says Bill Westman, agricultural attache to the U.S. Embassy in Brasilia. "And the potential remains fantastic."

So fantastic that ranchers have created a bustling market for pedigreed cows and bulls, as well as their sperm, eggs, and embryos. Auctions of superstar cattle and their reproductive matter are daily events. Canal Rural, a television channel, broadcasts them live for the benefit of far-flung buyers, beaming images of burly bovines across the country.

The market is such that a bidder last September purchased half-ownership of one cow, Recordacao, raising her total value to $1.7 million, a record for an animal of her breed. Recordacao is a Nelore--a white, humpbacked variety of Zebu, a breed imported from India in the 19th century. The Nelore thrives in Brazil because it survives the heat, humidity and insects of the country's interior better than other cattle.

But the Nelore is smaller than other breeds and by nature takes longer to reproduce and reach slaughter weight. That's where breeding helped; by crossing the strongest and most fecund cattle, offspring have grown bigger, faster. The improvements enabled ranchers to lower the cost of raising each animal and thus expand their herds; Brazil now boasts some 195 million cattle, outnumbering people slightly.

Ranchers tout Nelore meat as "greener" than other beef because the cattle are raised on grass, not the grains or processed feeds common elsewhere. The diet makes Nelore meat tougher than that of other breeds--it lacks the bits of intramuscular fat that U.S. consumers prize for tenderness--so the industry has pitched it as a healthier product.

Justas science helped ranchers adopt better breeding practices, ranchers are now using technology to better understand their pastures, too. Pecuaria Damha, a unit of privately held agribusiness and construction conglomerate unit of Grupo Encalso, develops nutritional supplements in Sao Paulo state. The company three years ago hired Ivan Valadao, a former Embrapa scientist known for his research on cattle diets. Valadao now heads efforts by the company to improve its pastures.

Because Damha has farms all over Brazil, the company's veterinarians noticed different growth patterns among its herds, depending mostly on season and geography. "We wanted to better understand why the animals at one ranch were growing better at certain times of the year than others," says Valadao.

The company began taking samples of its ranches' pastures and examining them in the laboratory. After burning the grasses, residue in the ashes yield their chemical makeup, enabling the scientists to look for shortages of calcium, cobalt, zinc, iodine and other elements necessary for proper nutrition.

Custom made. Contrasting the data with information compiled in growth charts, the company began developing nutritional supplements, mostly in the form of salt licks, which the animals consume in addition to the grass. Compared with the one-size-fits-all supplements traditionally offered on the market, which work like the multivitamins available for humans, Damha's supplements are designed to address the specific needs of a given ranch's animals. "You're no longer spending money on chemicals the cattle don't really need," says Valadao.

Researchers say Brazil is still dependent on technology developed elsewhere around the world. A pilot program at Embrapa, for instance, is studying how microchips, placed within the animal's navel, can track nutritional data, vaccine histories, and other essential information. But progress is slow because the chips, made abroad, are not always available, and because researchers disagree on how best to standardize systems that would impart and read the data they contain.

"There's a lag between what you'd like to do and understanding how best to use the technology at your disposal," says Sergio Raposo de Medeiros, a scientist at Embrapa's cattle research center in Campo Grande, the southwestern city that is one of the centers of the beef business.

Ranchers, too, say they're still trying to catch up with the possibilities afforded by technology. Ricardo Costa Martins Amatuzzi, a rancher in the southern state of Matto Grosso do Sul, first purchased a group of pedigreed cattle and embryos in 2001. In November, he and a business partner--their brand Neozebu emblazoned across their caps--scrutinized even more animals at a Nelore fair in Campo Grande.

"We're looking for even better animals to work with," he says. "Our herd could still get stronger."

gear BOX PIPELINE

IPOD SHUFFLE

Digital Music Player 

Price: US$99

www.apple.com

* The Good

It's small, light and elegant. Holds up to 240 songs that you can transfer directly from your computer. The rolling touch-button holds four easy-to-use functions: volume up, volume down, fast-forward and reverse. Capacity ranges from 512 megabytes or one gigabyte.

* The Bad

Unlike other small models, it does not come with a visual display listing songs. Wireless earphones would have been nice.

* Who Should Buy

Since it's cheap, it's ideal for teenagers and university students. It's also good for those who like to run or walk while listening to music.

* Who Should Not

Those who must have top-of-the-line equipment will be frustrated with the lack of a display screen.

MOTOROLA OJO

Personal videophone 

www.motorola.com

Delivers real-time video over broadband connection

Q1 2005

JAMO 2F

High-definition home-cinema system

www.jamo.com

Fully integrated system includes a 42" plasma wide-screen and a combo DVD player and receiver Just released

CASIO EXILIM ZOOM EX-Z750

Ultra-compact digital camera

www.casio.com

7.2 megapixel camera with video capabilities Just released

LG A7110

Mobile phone

www.us.lge.com

Navigate the web, mobile instant messages. Stores up to 1,000 low-resolution photos

Q1 2005