Australia's diagnostic poll haplotype test requires reliable and varied phenotype submissions to estimate polled probabilities of haplotypes, and is dependent on unbiased sampling of the population. This paper provides a review of the effectiveness of the haplotype poll test and shows clear potential for significant ascertainment bias to be affecting the accuracy of the test, resulting from industry submission of mostly unknown or polled phenotypes, with little control over phenotype scoring accuracy. A new project targeting the supplementation with horned animals is underway to address the resulting phenotype proportions, with the aim of greatly increasing the accuracy of the test. Keywords: poll, horn, haplotype, beef.

Single-step GBLUP (ssGBLUP) procedures have now been implemented into Australia's BREEDPLAN genetic evaluation system for beef cattle. This major remodelling required the development of many new features and modifications to existing procedures. The first requirement was the construction of a flexible but robust set of procedures for handling and processing of raw SNP genotypes to enable the construction of suitable genomic relationship matrices. The analytical processes were modified to replace with and for the explicit fitting of genetic groups. A new accuracy algorithm was developed and the solver was revised. Examples from Australian Angus and Brahman breeds comparing current BLUP evaluation with ssGBLUP are presented to show the resultant changes and effects of implementing the new genomic evaluations.