Genomic management Tools to Optimise Resilience and Efficiency
In today’s modern animal agriculture there is an increasing need to balance resilience and efficiency. The balance of resilience and efficiency determines the ability to adapt to changes. The need for resilient production systems is clear and increasingly urgent, and such systems include resilient animals.
Animals need to be more resilient because future farming conditions will expose them to increasing challenges in under different production systems and grazing environments. They also need an ability to recover from challenges like diseases which can vary across environments and farm systems. Although the importance of balancing resilience and efficiency for production purposes is clear, the problem is that it is still difficult to measure them on research farms, and almost impossible under commercial conditions. This limits the ability for animal breeders to select for resilience and efficiency and farmers to assess and manage their livestock for an optimal balance under their system. Moreover, the optimal trade-off between resilience and efficiency will differ according to the local production environment, i.e. tailored solutions to optimizing resilience and efficiency are needed. GenTORE is a 5-year EU funded project (H2020) that will tackle the issue of developing large-scale phenotyping of resilience and efficiency in both dairy and beef cattle. |
GenTORE Approach
21 partners representing the diversity of the sector.
- Multi-disciplinary: genomics, environmental assessment, nutritional physiology, health management, precision livestock farming, mathematical modelling & socio-economics
- Multi-actor: KIs, breeding industry, farm management and veterinary advisory services, farm technology companies, international organisations
- Multi-regional: Pedo-climatic zones including Atlantic, Alpine, Continental, Mediterranean and Nemoral
- Farming diversity: Organic farming, intensive & extensive grazing, intensive indoors systems
