Jennie Elizabeth Pryce (born 1972) is a quantitative geneticist based in

Melbourne Melbourne ( , ; Boonwurrung language, Boonwurrung/ or ) is the List of Australian capital cities, capital and List of cities in Australia by population, most populous city of the States and territories of Australia, Australian state of Victori ...

, Australia. She is the DairyBio animal program leader in conjunction with her role as principal research scientist for Agriculture Victoria and Professor of Animal Genetics at

La Trobe University La Trobe University is a public university, public research university based in Melbourne, Victoria (Australia), Victoria, Australia. Its main campus is located in the suburb of Bundoora, Victoria, Bundoora. The university was established in 1 ...

Early life and education

Pryce was born in

Shrewsbury Shrewsbury ( , ) is a market town and civil parish in Shropshire (district), Shropshire, England. It is sited on the River Severn, northwest of Wolverhampton, west of Telford, southeast of Wrexham and north of Hereford. At the 2021 United ...

Shropshire Shropshire (; abbreviated SalopAlso used officially as the name of the county from 1974–1980. The demonym for inhabitants of the county "Salopian" derives from this name.) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the West M ...

, England, in 1972. She attended Shrewsbury High School and then the

Cheltenham Ladies College Cheltenham Ladies' College (CLC) is a private boarding and day school for girls aged 11 or older in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, England. The school was established in 1853 to provide "a sound academic education for girls". It is also a member ...

. Pryce became interested in genetics through owning and breeding her pedigree, registered herd of

Holstein Holstein (; ; ; ; ) is the region between the rivers Elbe and Eider (river), Eider. It is the southern half of Schleswig-Holstein, the northernmost States of Germany, state of Germany. Holstein once existed as the German County of Holstein (; 8 ...

dairy cattle, under the prefix of Severnvale Holsteins. In 1994 she received BSc (Hons) 1st class from the

University of Edinburgh The University of Edinburgh (, ; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a Public university, public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Founded by the City of Edinburgh Council, town council under th ...

and a PhD in 1998 also from the University of Edinburgh in "The Genetics of Health and Fertility of Dairy Cattle" under the supervision of Professors Geoff Simm, William G. Hill, Robin Thompson and Roel Veerkamp.

Career

Between 1998 and 2001 Pryce was a dairy geneticist with

Scotland's Rural College Scotland's Rural College (SRUC; ) is a Public university#United Kingdom, public land based college, land based Research university, research institution focused on agriculture and life sciences. Its history stretches back to 1899 with the estab ...

. In 2001 she moved to New Zealand to take up a position with the breeding company

Livestock Improvement Corporation Livestock Improvement Corporation, or LIC, is a New Zealand multinational farmer-owned co-operative which, for more than 100 years, has provided genetics expertise, information and technology to the dairy sector, aimed at improving the prosperit ...

. Since 2008 Pryce has lived and worked in Melbourne, Australia, where her main areas of research interest are genetic improvement of functional traits (especially dairy cow fertility and feed conversion efficiency), optimising breeding scheme design under

genomic selection Genomic Selection (GS) predicts the breeding values of an offspring in a population by associating their traits (e.g. resistance to pests) with their high-density genetic marker scores. GS is a method proposed to address deficiencies of marker-assis ...

and development of dairy selection indices. Pryce is a member of the International Committee for Animal Recording’s Functional Traits Working Group and the Feed and Gas Working group and was also section editor of

Journal of Dairy Science The American Dairy Science Association (ADSA) is a non-profit professional organization for the advancement of dairy science. ADSA is headquartered in Champaign, Illinois. Consisting of 4500 members, ADSA is involved in research, education, and in ...

, a member of the Functional Traits working group of the International Committee on Animal Recording (ICAR) and a member of the scientific committee of the World Congress on Genetics Applied to Livestock Production. In Australia, Pryce sits on the Dairy Moving Forward Fertility group and Holstein Australia's Breed Development and Conformation Committee.

Awards

*American Dairy Science Association J.L. Lush Award for Animal Breeding and Genetics. *Australia's top researcher in the field of animal husbandry by research analytics firm League of Scholars in 2019. *2018 Agriculture Victoria Awards category “Excellence in Scientific Impact” winner for ImProving Herds. *2019 Agriculture Victoria Awards category “Excellence in Scientific Impact” winner for “Excellence in Discovery and Invention” for classifying the fertility of dairy cows using mid-infrared spectroscopy. *2019 Agriculture Victoria Awards category “Excellence in Leadership” winner.

References

External links

* * * * *A long pedigree in genetics
DairyBio » A long pedigree in dairy geneticsAnimal Genetic Improvement - Dr Jennie Pryce (Video)World Congress Livestock Genetics - update by Dr Jennie Pryce
(video) {{DEFAULTSORT:Pryce, Jennie Women geneticists Australian women scientists Living people 1972 births