Charlie & Fiona Massy  from Severn Park used some semen from Karori ram K279 (020279) and got an amazing result. Several of their top priced rams at their Ram Sale in December 2007 came from K279. Also, at their Stud Ewe Dispersal Sale on the 6th June 2008 a ewe from K279 achieved the second highest price ever paid in the world for a merino ewe- $3900 as well as the third highest price- $3600 . Charlie Massy made the comment in his ewes sale catalogue that K279 was an "Impact Sire expressing new protein with unique fibre traits" (Unfortunately K279 (son of K3138) died during his first joining but we have sons and grandsons as stud sires at Karori who are breeding extremely well). We have sent wool samples to the wool CRC to see if they can identify what is creating the unique softness in the Karori wools. In a paper written in 1959 by Professor John Speakman from the Department of Textile Industries at Leeds University in England, he said that "the assessment of 'quality' in wool is made by the visual and tactile judgement of experts, rather than scientific means" It is unfortunate that the wool industry has been obsessed for the last 55 years with replacing the visual and tactile judgement of quality by assuming that quality is determined by the average fibre diameter and other objectively measured traits. This objective measurement only path assumes that "the nature of the substance of the fibre is unimportant or that all wools are composed of the same substance. As regards this second assumption, the complexity of the wool fibre makes it improbable that the substance of all types of wool is the same and much evidence has been accumulated to show that there are not only variations in substance but that such variations are of great commercial importance" (Professor Speakman) There are many people now involved in the wool industry who neither understand the importance of "quality" nor have any expertise in visual and tactile assessment.