Terminology
Glossary of Terms/Definitions compiled from sheep industry documents that relate to wool or sheep:
| Term/Acronym | Descripton |
| µm | Symbol used for micron (micrometre) used in describing the fineness of a fleece sample |
| AASMB | Organisation – Australian Association of Stud Merino Breeders |
| Accuracy | A measure of the closeness of a test result to the true value. The difference between accuracy and precision should be noted. See also bias, precision, confidence limits. |
| Across-breed | Comparison of sheep across different breeds within a breed group |
| Across-flock | Comparison of sheep across different flocks within a breed group |
| AGBU | Organisation – Animal Genetics and Breeding Unit |
| Age Stages | A definition of stages of animal in age groupings used to calculated estimated breedering values (ebvs) eg. Birth, weaning, yearling, adult |
| AI | Artificial insemination (of semen to achieve a pregnancy) |
| Airflow | A method of measuring the mean fibre diameter of a sample of wool in which a test specimen (a measured mass of the scoured, dried and carded sample), after exposure to a conditioning atmosphere, is compressed to a fixed volume and a current of air is passed through it. The rate of flow is then adjusted so that the pressure drop across the sample equals a predetermined value. The rate of flow is an idnicator of the mean fibre diameter of the wool in the sample. The instrument is calibrated to international standard wool tops of known fineness. |
| AMSEA | Organisation – Australian Merino Sire Evaluation Association |
| AS | Australian Superfine – Fleece typing terminology |
| ASBV | Australian Sheep Breeding Values – genetic breeding value produced by Sheep Genetics for a given analysis across-flock |
| ASID | Australian sheep identification system – unique 16 digit ID made up from Breed Code (2 digits), Flock Code (4 digits), Year date (4 digits), Individual id (6 digits). |
| ATLAS | Automatic Tester of Length and Strength – a computer controlled instrument with measures the staple length, staple strength and position of break of individual samples. |
| AWEX | Organisation – Australian Wool Exchange |
| AWI | Organisation – Australian Wool Innovation |
| AWTA | Organisation – Australian Wool Testing Authority |
Please click on this link for a PDF with more Terms/Definitions.