**5.2 Current status of the application of genomics in the practices of beef cattle production in Indonesia**

The human population in Indonesia was about 250 million in 2018 while the cattle population was about 16.6m [36]. The country had smallholder cattle production system which formed about 90% of the cattle population and the remaining 10% of cattle were raised by commercial farmers and large beef cattle companies which were usually importing beef from Australia. The large beef cattle companies target market was situated in the Java Island.

Since Indonesia consists of Islands, there was a limited available land space for livestock production and thus there existed a higher demand for cattle meat than the level of production [36]. Agus and Widi [36] pointed out that the government of Indonesia made efforts since the 1980's for the intensive beef cattle production in the country. There had been the promotion of cross-breeding of the local Ongole cattle in Java with high producing *Bos taurus* (Simmental and Limousine) and other European breeds through the use of artificial insemination (AI). However the efforts made through the process of cross-breeding were not successful. In Addition, there had been the issue of unstable government policies on livestock production practices as were also very commonly found to exist in many other developing countries world-wide [36].

Thus there had not been the application of genomics in the breeding practices of beef cattle production in Indonesia. The increasing demand for meat did not match the domestic beef production and the country had no self-sufficiency in meat production [36].
