“Today we have a third of the number of cows we had in 1960, and we’re producing more milk,” said Christine Baes of the University of Guelph during her keynote presentation at the 2024 Dairy Cattle Reproduction Council annual meeting. “That’s a pretty good sustainability story, but when you Google ‘sustainability and dairy cows,’ you see headlines about cow flatulence. Why is that?”
Baes gave an overview of the Resilient Dairy Genome Project (RDGP), an effort led by herself, Ronaldo Cerri of the University of British Columbia, Marc-André Sirard of Laval University and Paul Stothard of the University of Alberta to improve the sustainability of the Canadian dairy industry by genomic advancements during the meeting in Arlington, Texas. This project was spurred by the dairy industry’s commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and is funded by Genome Canada. Over 30 collaborators and 35 international partner organizations are involved.
“The point behind this international collaboration is that different countries may benefit from what other countries are doing in a different way,” Baes said. “If you’re focusing on feed efficiency, you might benefit from other countries focused on methane emission data.”
This project is similar to Stothard’s work on the Efficient Dairy Genome Project, which collected phenotypes and information on feed efficiency and methane emissions.
“The RDGP continues this work, but we expanded the scope to include fertility and health traits,” Baes said. “At its heart, this project is about resilience. We’ve defined resilience as an animal that’s able to adapt rapidly to changing conditions without compromising its productivity, health or fertility, while becoming more resource-efficient and reducing its environmental burden.”
To achieve resiliency through genomics, the team has defined eight “research activities” and is actively conducting research in each area.
1. 'Closer-to-biology' fertility
“The idea here is to develop standardized phenotypes based on automatic sensors to look at physiological factors affecting things like estrus expression and embryo survival, to find genomic markers of estrus expression and fertility, and to look at new fertility phenotypes that are closer to the biology and even morphology of the cow,” Baes said. She explained that looking at days open, days from calving to first service, calving ease, etc., don’t always align with what the cow’s biology is trying to say.
If automation and data can help collect “really close to biology” fertility traits and incorporate them into a genetic evaluation, it will cut out variation caused by different management practices and benefit both cows and producers.
2. Enhanced disease resistance
Research has shown there is variation in how susceptible cattle can be to respiratory disease or diarrhea.
“If you think about infection pressure in a calf pen, that has to be accounted for when you’re trying to figure out why animals are getting sick,” Baes said. “If an animal is sick immediately, that calf might have lower or higher susceptibility than the calf that gets sick six to eight weeks after being exposed to the same or an increased amount of the pathogen.” She notes that this work is still in the preliminary stages but is very exciting for the industry.
3. Feed efficiency and methane reduction
This aspect of the project leans on previous work by Stothard but is expanding the reference population for studies on feed efficiency and methane reduction.
“We’re also starting to look at calf feed efficiency,” Baes said. “This is really interesting observing transitions from milk intake to solid feed – we’re looking at whether or not there is an association between early life feed efficiency and later in life.” Early life measurements of feed efficiency will aid in selection decisions.
4. Genomic and environmental relationships
Identifying variants within the genome is the focus of this section of the project.
“There may be types of variations within the genome that could be associated with phenotypic trends of interest,” Baes said. Studies are being conducted observing the effects of heat stress on important traits, looking at several different ecological zones.
5. Multigenerational effects and epigenetics
“Here we’re looking at quantifying the effect of early environment on the resilience of daughters,” Baes said. Monitoring heifers from fetus to adulthood will help reveal potential epigenetic markers correlated with resilience.
6. Data management
“We’ve created a structural variant database with all of the research results from this project,” Baes said. This is in the form of a browser, which allows users to view any findings related to a specific chromosome.
7. GE3LS component: Research on the ethical, environmental, economic, legal and social aspects of genomics
“This social aspect is looking at public acceptance of dairy under different breeding strategies,” Baes said. “They’re doing all these surveys and have asked the question: ‘If selected breeding would be used to solve the environmental impacts of the dairy industry in Canada, do you think that you would be happy?’ That’s an interesting question.” Baes noted that these types of questions and the answers they reveal aid researchers in understanding how the general public perceives the dairy industry.
8. Translation and implementation
Translating findings of this project into practice is perhaps the most important aspect, allowing dairy producers to implement knowledge on farms and achieve the industry’s goal to reduce emissions.
“If you think about moving from research to implementation, there are a lot of things that have to happen,” Baes said. “We start with milk MIR data processing."
Mid-infrared spectroscopy (MIR) is a process in which milk samples are analyzed by passing a beam of light through the milk and measuring the wavelengths produced.
“Each section of these wavelengths is associated with different phenotypic properties of milk,” Baes said. “You can actually predict the amount of methane the animal produces from a sample of milk using this technology.”
Changing headlines
Additional work is being done to ensure that selecting for methane-efficient cows will not negatively impact any other aspect of production. Baes noted that selecting for feed efficiency does not also improve methane efficiency. Predictions currently show that herds selecting for methane efficiency will see a reduction in methane by 20% to 30% by 2050. Baes also gave a quick summary of the Dairy ZERO Genome Project, which will include beef animals as well as dairy. The goal of this study is to reduce 55% of greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 without impacting production.
“The deliverables of this research (RDGP) are shaping the future of the industry in Canada,” Baes said. “I think that is quite exciting. Teamwork makes the dream work and without that, we’re not going to get anywhere. We’ve made some headlines – we’re starting to make a change.”
