Comparative assessment of meat production of Lithuanian beef cattle breeds

Lithuania as an agricultural country has been known for a long period of time. There was over one million heads of cattle during the interwar period. Cattle breeding has been developed as a dairy or mixed dairy and beef for a long time in Lithuania, as in many parts of the world. After the World war two beef cattle breeding was developed just in several countries such as (United Kingdom, France, Italy etc.). Beef cattle in Lithuania as an independant agricultural branch started to develope in 1995 when first breeding herd of beef cattle was brought to the country. Since then more and more milk cows were crossbred with beef bulls. Several breeding companies were rearing beef bulls for semen production that was used to inseminate milk cows with lower breeding value but that was not enough for much intense production of meat [3, 5]. Today, it is safe to say that beef cattle breeding has gained a momentum in Lithuania. Beef cattle numbers since 2011 – 55,009 heads has grown more then double rate in 2016 and from a total of 716,884 heads 152,601 were beef cattle breeds. Of whitch 29,174 are purebreed beef cattle that consists of 23.63 % of all beef cattle. Country farms breed various breeds of beef cattle but most popular are Limousine, Charolais, Aubrac, Angus, Simental and Hereford breeds. Beef cattle breeding development was encouraged by well-timed de-cision that milk and beef cattle sector was nominated as a priority in Lithua-nian agriculture. State aid for purchasing breeding beef cattle from foreign countries developed conditions for a constant growth of beef cattle numbers. Further steps strenghtening beef sector were made adopting Beef sector developent program and in 2013 National Animal Husbandry Sector Development Program for the period of 2014–2020 where more clear perspective for Lithuanian beef sector evolvment was drawn. In the future dairy cattle will be the base branch of whole Lithuanian cattle but the measures that are applied today greatly contributes that beef cattle branch would take a decent piece of pie out of all animal husbandry sector and in the near future make up a percentage of 30 % of all cattle. Meat sector is one of the main sectors that provide country with meat and contribute to the export consists of 39 % of revenue gained from animal husbandry and 20 % of revenue from agriculture. Priorities of producing high quality beef are rapidly changing. Profitability of beef cattle farms definately depends on hereditary traits of beef cattle breeds also use of those traits to improve animal growth rate, feed consumption, exterior, mus-cularity, carcass and meat quality [3, 23]. Different animals with different 133 genotypes have diverse structure of connecting tissue, unequal amount of itermuscular fats, meat toughness and digesting traits and all of that have an impact on meat quality [92]. The international and internal market attention to the meat quality influence beef cattle selection directions in Lithuania. Thus it is very important to know meat quality traits of various beef cattle breeds. Targeted and effective breeding selection management is very important seeking to raise animals with desired meat quality traits in beef cattle breeding. Seeking to reorientate cattle meat to a more atractive production, diversity of selection traits are very important [3]. The issue of the improvement of the Lithuanian beef cattle breeding situation and the population of beef cattle is typical for the countries of Eastern and Central Europe and is inseparable from the implementation of scientific achievements in practical work. Developing beef cattle breeding, there is a lack of knowledge about the meat production of individual breeds and the quality of meat in the production of livestock under the conditions of the feedbase in Lithuania. It is relevant for the further development of the branch to have the meat products and meat quality data of the most prevalent beef cattle breeds in the country. The absence of such data makes it difficult for the farm to select a breed and to establish a business plan for the future. The comparative evaluation of meat production of beef cattle populations has not been carried out so far in Lithuania, and in order to produce more competitive products on the market, such data are important for famrs choosing breeds according to farm conditions, ensuring increased effectiveness of selection process.