Our Team

Michael Aldridge

Research Scientist

Michael focuses on the application of genetics for improving the sustainability of the sheep and beef industries. This includes significant attention on developing methane traits for inclusion in indexes. Michael works on other traits related to sustainability including feed efficiency, health, welfare, and resilience. This is achieved by developing new traits from emerging technologies, and building tools for breeders that help the Australian livestock industry meet the grand challenges of the future with fit for purpose genetics that are more resilient and have less impact on the environment.


Michael completed his PhD on the genetic improvement of Australian meat goats, in collaboration with the University of Adelaide, AGBU, and MLA. After completing his PhD, he worked as a researcher and project manager at

Wageningen University and Research where he focused on large scale phenotyping of methane traits in commercial Dutch dairy herds and the development of methane breeding values. He was the lead researcher on various projects related to feed efficiency, health and welfare in the poultry and pork industries, and he still maintains an interest in improving computational efficiency for breeding applications.