Head of Future Farming Systems Group (interim)
Professor of Ruminant Nutrition & Production Systems
Future Farming Systems Group
Dairy Research & Innovation Centre / Beef & Sheep Research Centre
Research interests
My long-standing interest in less-invasive techniques to study ruminant nutrition has developed into a range of projects looking at biomarkers in accessible samples - including milk, urine, faeces and breath. The work is highly relevant to two major technological developments in animal science (i) the need for cheap and high-throughput phenotyping to exploit new genomic information; and (ii) rapid advances in the use of monitoring and sensing equipment on-farm (precision livestock farming).
My interests span rumen function, digestive efficiency and feed efficiency, with current projects on:
- Gene-centric and 16S-based rumen metagenomics
- Nitrogen isotopic fractionation as a marker for feed efficiency
- Markers/proxies for rumen methane production, with a particular focus on techniques for grazing cattle: ether lipids; faecal NIR spectroscopy; isotopic fractionation
- Diagnostic components of breath (hydrogen sulphide) and milk headspace (acetone)
- High-throughput analysis of faeces (NIR; laser diffraction analysis)
I also have an enduring interest in ruminant fatty acid metabolism – herbage fatty acids; rumen biohydrogenation; fatty acids in milk and meat.
Previous work included modelling of forage composition, dry cow feeding strategies, forages and fatty acids, fatty acids and fertility, and rumen diagnostics. Some work used directly by the animal feed industry – notably feed evaluation systems, feed values and dry cow strategies. Much more of my work has been used by farmers and advisers – notably to develop advice and models to predict and increase forage intakes, improve the utilisation of feed protein (reduce N pollution), improve milk composition, and facilitate the use of forage legumes in conventional and organic farming.