Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) is pursuing a new biotechnological research to boost the productivity and profitability of the country's cattle and aquaculture industries and address important sustainability and welfare issues. According to CSIRO's Food Futures Flagship Director Dr. Bruce Lee, the new multi-million dollar, three-year project aims to develop:

• a vaccine to sterilize male and female cattle
• better ways to breed female only Atlantic salmon, which are more productive than their male counterparts
• sterile female prawns which grow 30 per cent faster than males.

"We expect to have a profound impact on the profitability and global competitiveness of Australia's animal industries, the reliability of our food supply, and potentially create new life-science technologies for application both in Australia and internationally," said Prof. Michael Holland from the University of Queensland, one of the partners of CSIRO in this project.

Read more at http://www.csiro.au/news/Animal-reproduction-research-to-transform-industry.html.