A newly established research centre will bring technology and agricultural specialists together to help address key issues facing the dairy sector, including establishing the health and nutrition benefits of dairy products, increasing carbon efficiency, and increasing innovation as a response to the uncertainties arising from Brexit.
Hosted by Teagasc Moorepark, the SFI-funded VistaMilk Centre will also assist the Irish dairy industry to become a world leader in precision pasture-based dairying, with the outcomes impacting positively on the environment, animal wellbeing and the health of consumers.
"VistaMilk is the 17th and youngest of the SFI-funded research centres," says centre director Prof Donagh Berry. "We started on September 1st for an initial six-year term with €40 million in funding from SFI and 48 industry partners. Our core objective is to digitalise dairy farming. We are merging dairy with digital."
Other research partners include the Tyndall National Institute, Ireland's national microelectronics institute, the Telecommunications Software & Systems Group (TSSG) at Waterford Institute of Technology, and the Insight Centre for Data Analytics.
The field of research has been divided into three main thematic areas: soil and pasture; cow; and food. “Combined, these three areas cover the entire supply chain from soil to society,” Berry adds. “Within each of these thematic areas, VistaMilk has several targeted projects, each of which will leverage the combined expertise of the partners. Each targeted project involves at least one industry partner, who represent the sectors dealing with grass-seed breeding, animal and human nutrition, animal health, animal breeding, dairy-food processing, data analytics, sensor development, communications and networks, and other related technologies.”
Different approach
The centre will take a different approach to the development and manufacture of novel dairy products. Berry explains that dairy products such as yogurt or cheese are manufactured by processing milk which comes from cows. The milk in turn is a combination of the cow’s genetics and the feed it has eaten. “If you want to improve cheese or chocolate, maybe you could do it by using a different type of milk rather than making changes to the process. It’s milk by design.”
In other words, by breeding cattle for certain traits and giving them the right feed or quality of grass to eat, the constitution of the milk can be altered.
He points to the A1/A2 beta-casein debate as an issue where this could be important. “Both are contained in milk and there have been some claims that A1 beta-casein can be harmful. However, current processing technologies will not allow for the production of milk or milk products which do not contain it. “You have to get the cow to produce it instead.
We want to be able to predict if a cow will get sick in a week's time and make decisions and take actions based on that
“Saturated fat content of milk is dictated by genetics and feed,” he adds. “If you want to make products low in saturated fats, you process them differently. In future, we might breed animals differently to give lower-fat milk.”
This could lead to a situation where milk processors might contract a certain number of farmers to produce milk designed for a particular range of products and be financially rewarded for that, he adds.
Data analytics
Another area of the centre's research will look at the use of data analytics for decision support. "Data analytics and machine learning can be very powerful," says Berry. "A lot of data and statistics are produced today, and we want to exploit them. Talking about yesterday's weather and why it happened is not much use. What tomorrow's weather or next week's weather and grass growth is going to be like in different parts of Ireland is of a lot of use. We want to move to a predictive model. We want to be able to predict if a cow will get sick in a week's time and make decisions and take actions based on that."
He uses mastitis as an example. “If you have sensors around the mammary system and can see certain symptoms as well as detect indications in the milk, you can take preventative measures to cure or mitigate the condition before it becomes serious. We want to use data to create decision support systems for farmers.”
The research isn’t confined to production, however. “We look at the entire food chain,” says Berry. “Changes in soil will have an impact. If you gain in one area it will inevitably have an impact in another. We have to ensure that we don’t have adverse impact on animal wellbeing and the environment. It is challenging but exciting. For the first time, we have ICT specialists working with agricultural specialists. The ICT experts have the solutions but don’t know the problems. Farmers know the problems but haven’t got the solutions. That’s all changed now.”