MicroNor (Microbiota Normandes) - Intestinal microbiota caracterisation of Normande cows to improve their performances, resiliency and environmental impact

MicroNor (Microbiote Normandes) - Caractérisation du microbiote intestinal des vaches Normandes pour améliorer leurs performances, résilience et impact environnemental

Context

The French dairy sector is facing many challenges: maintaining national production, limiting it to #39; environmental impact, improving animal welfare, etc. In summary, the sector must be more efficient in terms of value for production while preserving the welfare of these producing animals. L de #39; Improvement of the year #39; efficiency through day#39; nowadays the selection of animals on their genetic skills, production d’#39; food to meet the needs of in#39; high producer animals and L. #39; rearing of these animals in conditions conducive to welfare and production. In order to go further, one of the elements unknown on the day #39; nowadays is #34; l -#39; other genome -#34; bovine animals: microbiota. Indeed, this microbiota plays a central role in the host (Calenge et al. #39; Sommer and Backhed 2013), in particular in the recovery of ingested food and disease resistance. Knowledge of this microbiota could therefore make it possible to obtain #39; to improve #39; to improve the efficiency of bulls in #39; artificial insemination in a given farm by no longer calculating an average genetic potential but also a genetic potential in the year #39; the environment of that breeding (-#61; GHP). D -#39; on the other hand, knowledge of this microbiota must make it possible to understand the proportions of each bacterial taxon which enable them to achieve good performance and disease resistance, as well as the practices of #39; livestock farms which enable them to be achieved; achieving these proportions and thus good performance and resistance (-#39; CHP). To sum up, knowledge of intestinal microbiota should allow for ove#39; optimise the ability of animals to produce with less resources and better disease resistance.

Activities

GHP will caracterise the intestinal microbiota of Normande dairy cows and focus on the heritable part (genetic). GHP should lead to the knowledge of the different farms' environment and to the consideration of these environments in the genomic index calculation of the artificial insemination bulls. CHP will meet the Normande microbiota with their performances (to define the microbiota to reach good performances) and the breeding practises (to see how to act on the microbiota). Finally, the idea is to optimize the use of ressources by dairy cows, while limiting their environmental impact (improve their efficiency).