Breeding Strategies for Sustainable Dairy Development in Asia

Leo Dempfle

How much milk would we like to have?

• Milk and dairy products are very valuable in diversifying the human diet

• Milk is energy dense and provides high quality protein and micronutrients in an easily absorbable form

• Milk is a good source of calcium, magnesium, selenium, riboflavine, vitamin B12, etc.

• But it is poor in iron and in folic acid

• However, it is also different from human milk

Comparison of milk composition

Component Human Milk (%) Cow Milk (%) Buffalo Milk (%)

Protein 1.0 3.3 4.0

Fat 4.4 4.0 7.5

Lactose 6.9 4.7 4.4

In human Milk there is no ß-lactoglobuline 40% of protein is casein (80% in bovine milk) ß-casein dominates (αS1 in bovine milk)

Less favourable aspects

• Low iron and folic acid

• Lactose malabsorption (lactase non-persistency) leading to lactose intolerance

• Milk protein allergy (2-6 % of children)

• Milk is no panacea – one can do without (see adherers of the vegan cuisine)

• Big cultural differences in consumption

Contribution of milk to diets

Component Asia/Africa %

Europe %

Dietary Energy 3 8 – 9

Dietary Protein 6 – 7 19

Dietary Fat 6 – 8 11 – 14

Recommendations about milk consumption

• Recommendations about milk consumption are quite diverse

• Consensus seems to be: – No unmodified cow milk to infants below 12 months

– Otherwise about 500 ml milk per day, preferably with reduced fat content

• Recommendation in Asia at the lower end (China 300ml, India for adults 300ml, Thailand 200-400ml)

• Biggest impediment to higher consumption is high price

What production do we have?

Region Human Number

in million

Total Cow Milk

million tonnes

Total Buffalo Milk

million tonnes

Daily Milk available in kg

per capita

Africa 1,084 34.3 2.7 .09

Americas 962 181.7 -- .52

Asia 4,255 169.8 94.6 .11

Europe 742 210.3 0.2 .78

Oceania 38 29.6 -- 2.13

World 7,080 625.8 97.4 .28

Cow milk and buffalo milk treated equally Infants below 12 months also included

What production do we have? Country Human

Number in million

Total Cow Milk

million tonnes

Total Buffalo Milk

million tonnes

Daily Milk available in kg

per capita

China 1385 37.4 3.1 .08

India 1237 54.0 66.0 .27

Japan 127 7.6 .16

Pakistan 179 13.4 23.7 .57

Nepal 27 0.5 1.2 .17

Mongolia 3 0.3 .27

Myanmar 53 1.3 0.3 .08

Sri Lanka 21 0.2 0.1 .04

Thailand 67 1.1 .05

New Zealand 4.5 20.0 12.18

Conclusion 1

• In Asia (and Africa) there is far too little milk produced; thus even the modest recommendations for Asian countries cannot be fulfilled! (with few exceptions)

• Biggest impediment to higher consumption of milk is often the high price

• How to raise and improve milk production??

Determining Factors on the Utility (Profit)

of Dairy Production

Utility

(Profit)

AnimalNutrition

GeneticImprovement

DiseasesHousing

Breeds/Crosses

Demand forAnimal Products

Cultural Aspects

Climate:Temperature

Rain Fall

Soil fertility InfrastructueTraffic, Cooling

FodderProduction

By-products

How to achieve sustainable and affordable dairy production

• Economic dairy production is a complex system!

• Important factors are highly interrelated

• Climate <---> diseases (ticks, tsetse, helminth)

• Climate <---> fodder production

• Infrastructure <---> market access (perishable)

• Important Influence: diseases, nutrition, breeds including genetic improvement

Improvement of an indigenous breed

• In parts of West Africa (Gambia, South-Senegal, Guinea) there are high temperatures and a rainy season of three to four months (600 to 1,000 mm)

• Crop production of sorghum, millet, groundnuts

• Livestock: cattle, sheep, goats

• Diseases: Tick-borne diseases (except East Coast fever), internal parasites, trypanosomosis, etc.

Indigenous animals cont‘

• Nutrition of cattle: Bushland, fallows, by-products of cropping (stover, etc.)

• Production system: No input, some output

• Large fraction of population depends on cattle

• Because of trypanosomes indigenous breeds are needed in that system (trypanotolerant)

• Indigenous means really indigenous

• Result of a trial with two breeds

Indigenous animals cont‘ • N‘Dama indigenous in Gambia, South Senegal,

Guinea, South Mali, …

• Gobra-Zebu indigenous in North Senegal

• The two breeds are hardly 100 – 200 km apart

• 50 N‘Dama, 50 Gobra and 50 Gobra x N‘Dama raised in a tsetse free area up to an age of 1 yr

• Then put into a very high challenge area with good veterinary care

• After one year, about 90% of N‘Dama, 50% of crosses and 10% of Gobra were still alive!

Indigenous animals cont‘

• In order to utilise the fodder resources, in this case, you have to use the indigenous breed

• You can still manage the breed and try to improve it but without loosing the adaptedness.

• A nucleus was formed and a PPRS (Pedigree and Performance Recording Scheme) was implemented

• Nucleus is still in existence, but should be much larger (cooperation with other countries)

Increasing dairy production by crossing (Continuous F1)

• Same environment as in the last example

• Cities are really sprawling (doubling in less than 10 years)

• Crop production – groundnut (hay is excellent fodder)

• Peri-urban dairy production based on groundnut hay and concentrate

• Continuous production of F1 animals (used by Brazilian colleagues)

Increasing dairy production cont’

• In many dairy systems about 80% of the female calves are needed for replacement

• Thus, 20% of cows can be mated by eg beef bulls or something else

• N‘Dama were synchronised and mated with Holstein and Jersey (with some difficulties)

• What has to be done to keep the young calves alive? Not too much!

Schematic Picture of a Continuous F1-Scheme

xLocal PopulationExotic

Bulls/

Semen

xLocal PopulationExotic

Bulls/

Semen

F1-Cows

xLocal PopulationExotic

Bulls/

Semen

F1-Cows

Increasing dairy production cont’

• Results: calf mortality low, age at 1st calving 2.5 years (N‘Dama 4-5 yrs), calving interval about one year (N‘Dama two), if calf died – lactation continued, milk yield up to 3,000 kg (N‘Dama 250-300kg), long lasting animals

• Problems: System needs a large back-up population; synchronisation; what breed to use to mate the F1?

• Not sufficiently researched in West Africa but picked up by some farmers

Increasing dairy production cont’

• Some calculations:

• Gambia has about 1.5 million inhabitants, 300,000 cattle and 100,000 cows

• Using annually 10% of the cows for crossing we would get 18,000 F1 cows.

• With 3,000kg milk one gets 54,000,000 kg milk

• By 0.4 kg milk/capita it would be milk for one quarter of the population

Increasing dairy production by up-grading

• In North America/Europe genetic improvement of dairy cattle has a very long history

• Last half century scientifically optimised breeding schemes

• Last five years things accelerated by large scale application of genomic selection

• Very large breeds profited most whereas smaller breeds became less competitive

Increasing dairy production cont’

• For single purpose: the Holstein (or Holstein-Friesian) dominate, Jersey, ???

• For dual purpose: Simmental/Fleckvieh dominate

• Other breeds like Brown Swiss, Ayrshire, Norwegian Red, Montbeliarde, Normand are still good breeds but do they have any advantage?

Increasing dairy production-top condition

• In conditions similar to those in Europe or North America why not just going pure?

• Many countries can provide Holstein of top quality (US, Canada, France, Netherlands, Germany)

• New Zealand might/should also be of interest

• Have nucleus somewhere – just operate a multiplier

Schematic Picture of Imp. Semen - Multiplier - Commercial Herds

Imported

Semen

Multiplier

Commerial Herds

Increasing dairy production-top condition cont’

Fraction AI p

Bulls needed annually in com.

Cows needed in multiplier

Semen import

0.0 1,000 4,000 12,000

0.1 901 3,604 10,812

0.5 505 2,020 6,060

0.9 109 436 1,308

1.0 10 40 120

Size of Multiplier for 100,000 cows to be served In multiplier 3 inseminations for one calf p is fraction of cows in AI in the commercial population One AI bull for 10,000 cows One NS bull for 50 cows AI bulls used for one year (genetic progress!) NS bulls used for two years; only half of the bulls acceptable PPRS at least in the introduction is needed

Increasing dairy production-medium/harsh conditions

• In medium/harsh conditions pure exotics are not appropriate

• Full hardiness of indigenous breeds might not be needed

• Form a synthetic!

• Many breeds in the past were created that way, more recently eg Girolando (Gir, Holstein)

• Functioning PPRS absolutely essential

PPRS (Pedigree and Performance Recording Scheme)

• Collecting biographical and performance data in a systematic way, manage the data and analyse them

• Unique identification, sex, date of birth, dam, sire (having that all relationships are known)

• Performance data: birth weight, further weights at various ages, adult weight, all mating dates, all calving dates, diseases and treatments, exit date, milk yield and various milk contents at regular intervals

• Relational database, statistical software (open source)

Genetic improvement

• Basics of genetic improvements are quite simple: candidates are ranked for (genetic) usefulness and top ones are used to generate next generation!

• Aggregate Breeding Value (worth of animal):

Hi = a1BVi1 + a2BVi2 + … + apBVip

• ap is economic weight of trait p

• BVip is the breeding value of animal i in trait p

Genetic Improvement cont’

• Genetic progress per year is:

ΔH/Δt = i ρ σH/Δt

• σH: the genetic standard deviation (variation) of H in the breed

• i: the intensity of selection; increases the smaller the fraction of candidates used

• ρ: correlation between the true value of H and its estimate

• Δt: length of the generation interval in years

• In dairy cattle, improvement is slow (1-2% of mean)

Economic assessment of genetic improvement

• Even though genetic improvement is very slow it has some remarkable properties, namely

– being permanent

– being cumulative

– being multiplicative

• The next three slides will illustrate these properties

0 2 4 6 8 10

01000

2000

3000

4000 One Generation of Genetic Improvement

Years

Genetic P

rogre

ss

0 2 4 6 8 10

01000

2000

3000

4000

Several Generations of Genetic Improvement

Years

Genetic P

rogre

ss

Schematic Picture of Nucleus - Multiplier - Commercial Herds

Nucleus

Multiplier

Commerial Herds

Consequences of the three properties

• With a relatively small nucleus you can influence a very large commercial population

• This is widely realised in pigs and in poultry

• Historically, in cattle the nucleus was always very large (herdbook), even though some members were not very active.

• Example form Germany: 4.2 m dairy cows, 3.7 m in PPRS, 2.8 m in herdbook.

0.5m - 0.9m – 2.8m

• Is this necessary??

Economic assessment of genetic improvement cont‘

• Even though the annual improvements are very small, the three properties still make (most of the time) genetic improvement worthwhile!

• Let‘s just look on one annual improvement as shown in the next slide

0 2 4 6 8 10

01000

2000

3000

4000 One Generation of Genetic Improvement

Years

Genetic P

rogre

ss

Economic assessment cont’

NPVnow = -C0+(ΔH×T)/(1+i)1+(ΔH×T)/(1+i)2 + ...

NPV: Net Present Value

C0: Cost we have now

ΔH: Profit per cow created by the investment C0

T: the number of cows in the commercial level benefiting from the investment

i: is the interest rate for discounting (inflation free)

Economic assessment cont’

• Two values have still to be determined

– tF: as result of the investment at time 0 when does the first profit occur

– tL: Up to what year do we consider the profit (time horizon)

NPV0=-C0+(ΔH×T)/(1+i)tF+ … + (ΔH×T)/(1+i)tL

NPV0=-C0+(ΔH×T)×[1–1/(1+i)tL-tF+1]/[i×(1+i)tF-1]

NPV0=-C0+(ΔH×T)×K

Economic assessment cont’ values of K (i = 0.04)

TL

tF 10 15 20 50 infinite

1 8.11 11.12 13.59 21.48 25.00

5 4.48 7.49 9.96 17.85 21.37

10 0.68 3.68 6.15 14.05 17.56

Summary

• Milk and dairy products valuable part of diet

• Agreement about recommendation > 300 ml

• Shortage of milk to provide > 300 ml

• No general recipe how to increase production

– Improving indigenous breeds

– Continuous F1

– Upgrading (complete – but conservation!)

– Upgrading (synthetics)

• Economic assessment (usually looks not bad)

• PPRS is absolutely necessary for all variants