June 29, 2007

Dutch research discovers genes affect fat content in milk

Dutch researchers have found that a cow's genes may have more to do with the amount of fat in the milk it produces rather than feed composition, as is widely-thought.

The results of the study by the Product Design and Quality Management Group in the country would be published in the Journal of Dairy Science and Animal Genetics.

The research involved a large-scale research project among 2,000 cows on 400 Dutch dairy farms.

The link was clear when The Animal Breeding and Genomics Centre in the Netherlands took the fatty acid composition values found in the milk and compared it to the pedigrees of the cows involved in the research project

An important advantage shown up by the research is that the DNA profile of the bull can be used to predict the fat composition of the daughters' milk, allowing dairy farms to adjust fat content in milk for specific groups.