Grant: Canada Research Chairs

The world is facing great challenges in food security in the next decades with the world’s population expected to reach nearly 10 billion and 60% more food needed by 2050. Beef and dairy farms are the key global agriculture sectors that provide animal proteins (meat and milk, accounting 45% of global animal protein) to meet the nutritional needs of humans. However, there are increasing concerns surrounding production inefficiency, agriculture’s environmental footprint (e.g., greenhouse gas (GHG) emission and manure), animal health and welfare, and one health (animal, human and environmental health such as zoonotic diseases and antimicrobial resistance transmissions). In Canada, cattle farming is the largest livestock industry, and continued improvements in production efficiency and health of cattle are central to ensuring sector sustainability and growth while minimizing its environmental footprint Therefore, novel technologies are needed for the cattle industry to improve production efficiency, environmental sustainability, health and welfare of Canada’s cattle population to adapt to consumer demands, changing regulatory requirements on environmental concerns and food product safety as well as the increasing prevalence of climate extremes. This is central to ensuring the sustainability and competitiveness of the cattle industry in Canada and globally. The proposed research will address the above new challenges through the following research areas based on functional genomics, microbial genomics, and multiomics (transcriptomics and metabolomics) for host-microbiome interactions: 1) Novel microbial genomics-based microbiome solutions for reducing methane emission and foodborne pathogen colonization in cattle; 2). Host-Microbiome driven interventions to improve animal health to reduce infectious diseases and antimicrobial usages; 3). Multi-omics to understand molecular basis of animal welfare and product quality in response to environmental and climate changes; 4). BigData and machine learning for precision farming and decision making to translate the omics research to precision management strategies to reduce GHG and improve production efficiency. Outcomes of these novel and innovative multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary research will lead to the microbiome and omics-based solutions for sustainable livestock production, climate adaption and mitigation technologies, improved animal productivity, health and welfare.