Dr Kim Bunter is a Principal Scientist at the Animal Genetics and Breeding Unit (AGBU). Since 2022 she has held the position of Deputy Director where she contributes leadership to a team of close to 40 scientists, staff and students that develop and build the genetic infrastructure that underpins genetic improvement programs for agriculture industries in Australia, including sheep, beef, swine, goats, bees and plants.

Kim has been a part of the AGBU and by extension the AAABG communities for over 30 years. A product of the University of New England education pathway, Kim completed her PhD in 2002. Her foray into Ostrich breeding for her PhD, an unexplored frontier at the time, would foreshadow Kim’s career as someone who tackled new problems, species and traits. As a result of her desire to answer practical industry questions, Kim developed important knowledge for implementation across many species including pigs, sheep, beef cattle, Sydney Rock oysters, ostrich, and prawns. Recently Kim provided pivotal leadership for the development of a genetic evaluation system for Australian honeybees called “Plan Bee”.

Kim’s largest impact on the Australian genetics industry is certainly in the pig industry. Kim collaborated widely with researchers in universities and breeding companies and has contributed to the long-term impact of genetics expertise at these breeding companies where former PhD students now hold influential roles. Kim led many projects in pigs including development of mate selection strategies, and projects on immune responsiveness, piglet mortality, heat stress, use of juvenile IGF-1 in pig breeding, development of selection criteria to improve welfare in group housed sows, the genetics of reproductive performance, sow longevity and feed efficiency, and determination of meat and eating quality differences between Australian genotypes. Her work contributed to several publications and developments in PIGBLUP software. 

Kim has also applied her extensive knowledge in the genetics of reproduction to other species. Kim contributed to the development of the “Days to Calving” trait at AGBU, which became the primary reproductive trait in BREEDPLAN for beef cattle. In recent years Kim, alongside the team at AGBU, has developed the component reproduction analysis for the Sheep Genetics LAMBPLAN Maternal and Merino evaluations. This was a significant body of work with huge benefit to the Australian sheep industry as it enabled breeders to select on the components of reproduction and focus on improving weaning rates through improved survival of lambs, not just larger litters. Kim has continued to provide guidance on improving welfare in the sheep industry through her work with lamb survival and the development of footrot breeding values.

Kim has (co)authored over 200 publications across a wide variety of species and topics. Kim’s first contributing paper to AAABG was in 1995 at the Roseworthy Conference. Since then, Kim has authored and co-authored over 50 AAABG papers and was President of the 2019 conference in Armidale. This conference demonstrated Kim’s dedication to the organisation as she pulled together a great conference against the odds with the notorious black summer bush fires as a backdrop. She backed this up leading a AAABG conference hub in Armidale in 2021, following Covid and post- tornado. For her outstanding contributions to the science of genetics and animal improvement, the Association for the Advancement of Animal Breeding and Genetics is pleased to elect Kim Bunter as a Fellow of the Association.