The Ruminomics Project

Ruminomics is using the latest –omic technologies to understand how ruminant gastrointestinal microbial ecosystems, or microbiomes, are controlled by the host animal and/or the diet consumed, and how this impacts on greenhouse gas emissions, efficiency and product quality. New models and tools are being developed to enable the livestock industry to respond to the challenges of decreasing environmental impact and improving feed efficiency. A large-scale genetic association study involving 1000 dairy cows will relate feed intake, digestion efficiency, milk production/composition and methane emissions to the ruminal microbiome and host genome. These data will lead to new indicator traits and tools for use in both traditional and genomic selection. Studies will establish the effects of host species and nutrition on the ruminal microbiome. A metegenomic study is defining the organisms present in the rumen of different species and is informing the optimisation of a meta-barcoding 16S rRNA analysis protocol will be used to investigate ruminal microbiomes more accurately, rapidly and cheaply.