Body conformation and robustness as potential frontiers in pasture-based beef cattle breeding: a narrative review

Summary

As the demand for pasture-finished beef continues to grow, the importance of sustainably producing cattle under pasture-based systems has become increasingly evident. The arid and semi-arid environments are very variable and volatile, making cattle robustness an increasingly valuable attribute. The current trend in genetic selection in pasture-based cattle production systems has focused on adaptation among other traits but ignoring the importance of robustness. Robustness is a difficult phenotype to characterise because it is a complex trait composed of multiple components, including dynamic elements such as the rates of response to, and recovery from, environmental perturbations. Further, measuring robustness’ component traits is time-consuming, expensive, and labour intensive. To impleme