Enhancing Livestock Fertility to Ensure Food Security on the Global Scale
The increase in the global human population and challenges in livestock production requires precision farming of food animals to enhance their efficiency of reproduction and production as well as product quality.
The fertility of bucks and bulls is defined as the ability of the sperm to fertilize and activate the egg and support embryonic and fetal development. Male fertility is influenced by multiple factors, such as environmental factors, sanitary status, management, and nutrition. Research shows that there are significant differences in fertility among bulls and bucks, as well as the freezability of their sperm. Our research goals on male fertility include developing sperm biomarkers of fertility and improving extenders for sperm cryopreservation using systems biology approaches within the context of systems physiology
The fertility of females, does and cows, is a multifaceted issue. One of the issues affecting goat reproduction is the short estrous cycle which results in the loss of viable embryos and reduces the overall production in goats. Our research has enriched the field of reproductive biology in goats by characterizing the abnormally regressing corpus luteum (CL), that leads to embryonic loss and reduced pregnancy rates. This original and pioneering work has also utilized high-resolution color-Doppler ultrasound to develop a method for increasing the pregnancy rate in goats when performing artificial insemination. The increasing importance of the microbiome in reproduction has driven our research, in which, we have characterized the microbiota of the goat female reproductive tract. In an effort to understand the relation of residual feed intake (RFI, efficiency) and its reported relationship to reproductive efficiency, we have adapted the GrowSafe system to determine RFI in weanling goats for innovative, transformative, and translational research