Optimising Breeding of Dairy Cows: Leveraging Genetics for More Sustainable Production: 186 (Burleigh Dodds Agricultural Science)

Dairy cow breeding continues to face several monumental challenges, namely the need to balance production and non-production traits with consumer expectations surrounding animal health, welfare, resilience and sustainability. At the same time, there is a growing body of phenotypic and genetic data which, when combined with state-of-the-art analytical techniques, can improve the precision and applicability of dairy cow breeding and contribute to achieving a greater level of sustainability for the sector.

Optimising breeding of dairy cows: Leveraging genetics for more sustainable production provides a comprehensive overview of the latest developments in dairy cow breeding, focussing on recent advances in the use of genomics, phenomics and other ‘omics’ technologies. The book also considers how particular technologies can be applied to achieve desired breeding goals, such as improvements in feed efficiency, thermotolerance, reproductive efficiency and longevity.

This book builds on a successful earlier volume published by Burleigh Dodds Science: Advances in breeding of dairy cattle (2019).

Professor Donagh Berry is a Senior Principal Research Officer in quantitative genetics at Teagasc, Ireland as well as holding several (inter)national professorship appointments. He is strongly engaged in third-level education and extension to a wide range of different stakeholders. He was awarded a higher Doctorate in Science based on published works which included >400 peer reviewed scientific journal articles mostly relating to dairy cow breeding. Working across species, his research interests are in phenotyping strategies, breeding goal development and deployment, genetic evaluations and genomic predictions.

Dr. Alison Van Eenennaam is a Cooperative Extension Specialist in the field of Animal Genomics and Biotechnology in the Department of Animal Science at University of California-Davis, USA. She serves as the bovine genome coordinator for the USDA National Animal Genome Research Program, served as a member of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) Study Committee for “Science Breakthroughs 2030: A Strategy for Food and Agricultural Research”, and is an elected Fellow and current chair of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Agriculture, Food, and Renewable Resources Section O. Dr. Van Eenennaam has been the recipient of many distinguished awards throughout her career.

Giulio Visentin is an Associate Professor of Animal Breeding and Genetics at the Department of Medical Veterinary Sciences, University of Bologna, Italy. During his career, he spent over two years at the Teagasc Animal Research and Development Centre (Ireland) and more than three years at the Research and Development Unit of the Italian Holstein National Breeders Association. His research interests include dairy cattle quantitative genetics and genomics, selection index design and implementation, high-throughput phenotyping, and the application of statistics to life sciences.