Relatie microbioom en genetica

The cow’s rumen microbiome has an impact on its methane emission. Furthermore, individual variation in microbiome exist and is partially heritable, making the microbiome an interesting trait when breeding cattle with lower methane emissions. Current commercial breeding schemes of dairy cattle do not take the rumen microbiome into account. This is partially because, traditional rumen sampling is unfit for use in large-scales due to its required equipment, cost, time and invasive nature. To implement the fast and effective breeding of dairy cattle with low methane emissions on a large-scale, we thereby strive to create a minimalistic microbiome sampling and analysis (phenotyping) methodology that is suitable for dairy cows. We will use a dataset of rumen microbiota collected previously in the 2020-Klimaatenvelope, to find out which microbial genes are abundant, heritable and genetically correlated with methane and to develop statistical models for breeding value estimation including microbiome data. In addition, we will investigate whether the microbiome from buccal swaps is representative of the microbiome of rumen samples, as buccal swaps are less invasive and easier to implement as a large-scale phenotyping method for the microbiome.

If we successfully find a phenoytping method, we want to conduct a large-scale trial to proof the concept of a microbiome breeding value and start breeding low emission cattle to assure its usability and encourage the uptake of the method with farmers and breeding companies.

In summary this project aims to excellerate the breeding of low methane emitting cattle through a microbiome breeding value and has three objectivs

-We will investigate the minimal data requirements to estimate accurate rumen microbiome breeding value

-We will estimate breeding value using microbiome data based on buccal swabs and rumen samples to test their comparability.

-If feasable, we will apply the new phenotyping method on a large-scale to proof the concept.