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Tomasz Wins Inverarity Award - SAC Man Makes Choices Easier For Livestock Breeders

SAC News Release Ref. No: 10N53
Published: 12 Jul 2010

For his work on an easy-to-use website for livestock breeders, SAC programmer Tomasz Krzyzelewski has been awarded the 2010 Inverarity Prize for Business Innovation at SAC.

This prize, established by former SAC Chairman Sandy Inverarity, rewards a special contribution to SAC business and customer service.  It was presented to Tomasz by Chairman Lord Jamie Lindsay at SAC’s annual graduation ceremony at the University of Glasgow on 9th July 2010.

Tomasz works in EGENES, the sector of SAC that provides information to the livestock industry on the best genotypes of sheep and beef breeds for breeding purposes.  In addition to this genetic data being of commercial value to breeders around the world it will also help our understanding of how best to make livestock production viable against the backdrop of climate change.

The work done by Tomasz on a new, web-based search engine for the BASCO national database, has made it far easier for customers to reach important information on the breeding values of individual sheep and cattle. The BASCO database is owned by a number of breed societies and used by Signet, a livestock performance recording company. It contains the details of thousands of individual animals and their owners. This information helps other breeders select embryos, semen or live animals to use in their own breeding programmes.

SAC manages the BASCO site on behalf of EGENES (Edinburgh Genetic Evaluation Service), a commercial initiative tightly aligned to SAC Research. SAC regularly updates genetic evaluations on the livestock listed in the BASCO data base so that customers can make decisions based on the latest information about the breeding value of the rams, ewes, bulls or cows involved.

Tomasz has worked in EGENES for 4 years and is a highly prized member of staff. The easy to use search engine he developed has already increased the number of hits on the website.  For example if a user only knows part of a name of a breeder or animal they can enter that information and even if it is only a few characters the engine begins searching and presents them with a list of possible options.

Among those using the data are SAC consultants who find their work much easier and less time-consuming. Increased customer satisfaction has gained the development many accolades, including several at the bi-annual Sheep Breeders Round Table. The very positive feedback from users has created further business opportunities and benefits for SAC.  

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News Release Issued By

Mr Ken Rundle
Senior Communications Officer
SAC (Scottish Agricultural College) Work SAC, King's Buildings, West Mains Road,
Edinburgh
EH9 3JG
TelWork 0131 535 4196

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