Objective
Modern cattle production systems are caracterized by high levels of product output (milk and beef) per animal. The direct, obvious relationship between product output per animal and farm profitability is an incentive for ongoing technological development towards increased production levels. However, single-minded increase of production per animal will lead to a deterioration of animal health and reproductive performance and, therefore, increased metabolic stress and reduced longevity. There is a growing consumer concern regarding the suffering of animals from diseases and disorders, and regarding the use of antibiotics for treatment and their effects on both animals, products and humans. Therefore, technological development should be aimed at a balanced improvement of production traits and functional traits: characteristics of an animal which increase efficiency of production not by higher output of products but by reduced costs of input, such as genetic disease resistance, reproductive capacity, and feed intake capacity.
Directional animal breeding can contribute to avoiding deterioration and possibly improving functional traits in cattle production.
The recognition of the importance of functional traits, and the possible role of animal breeding, has led to research activities in many countries. Research focusses on tool development - unambigious trait definition, reliable trait recordig, and proper evaluation procedures - and tool implementation optimization of breeding programmes including production and functional traits. This research requires a multi-disciplinary effort; relative to production traits, functional traits are difficult to measure on a large number of animals, are more directly representing complicated biological-physiological mechanisms, and have other statistical properties. The specific nature of functional traits requires a broad, international research collaboration. Given the leading position of nordic countries (Sweden, Finland, Norway and Denmark) in breeding for functional traits, an international concerted action should facilitate knowledge exchange and avoiding unnecessary overlap. A final reason for international discussion is the increasing international, worldwide exchange of genetic material (semen, embryols, living animals), requiring uniform genetic evaluations available on breeding stock.
The objectives of the proposed concerted action are:
* to bring together researchers and people from breeding organisations from all member countries of the EU, and from other Countries with major interests in cattle production, to develop concepts for breeding of functional traits by defining proper breeding goals and strategies to achieve the goals;
* to enhance collaborative efforts for the further development of efficient recording systems and breeding value estimation procedures;
* to stimulate the,exchange of existing knowledge (e.g. in the form of computer programs) about the genetic.evalu ' ation of functional traits;
* to develop recommendations for breeding programmes for functional traits. Three main activities should lead to accomplishment of those goals:
1. A series of four workshops on the definition, recording and genetic evaluation of traits related to the following groups of functional traits: Health, Fertility and reproduction, Metabolic stress, Longevity (including conclusions on all four workshops);
2. Travel (a) Short term visits (up to 3 weeks) for exchange of computer programs, inspection of recording systems, (b) Longer term visits (up to 8 weeks) for enhancement of collaborations on the development of new programs/systems;
3. Internet activities (a) Installation of a home page and news group: Functional Traits, (b) Making available computer programs for breeding value estimation. Inclusion of partners from both research and breeding organisations, giving a short time leg from development to implementation of breeding value estimation programs, should guarantee success of the concertation.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- natural sciences computer and information sciences internet
- social sciences sociology demography fertility
- medical and health sciences basic medicine pharmacology and pharmacy pharmaceutical drugs antibiotics
- agricultural sciences animal and dairy science domestic animals animal husbandry
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Coordinator
6700 AH WAGENINGEN
Netherlands
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