Context
FERTIWALIM is a project dealing with the fertility of two main cattle breed in Wallonia, in particular, the Blanc Bleu Belge (BBB) for meat production and the Holstein for milk production.
Objectives
The project aims to improve the fertility of the Walloon cattle breed through the development of feed products specific to the breed and its physiological stage and to improve the production technology of an insemination centre.
Expected results
Several deliverables are expected at the end of the project such as the expertise allowing development of new feed products with the creation of tools for the quality control, the improvement of the cattle fertility and the establishment of a method based on mid-infrared spectroscopy to control male fertility within the insemination centre.
Contribution
The unit « Food and Feed Quality » of the department « Valorization of Agricultural Products » will participate to the development of analytical solutions based on MIR spectroscopy, and fluorescence microscopy, for a rapid control of bovine semen, in addition to the development of chemometric models correlating NIR spectroscopic data and intrinsic quality of feed.
The Unit «Animal Nutrition and Sustainability» of the department «Production and Sectors» will realize an experimental with the CRA-W’s herd in order to establish and validate indicators of fertility. The unit will also participate to a reflection to refine the feed products in the aim of fulfilling the needs of the cow and of optimizing its fertility, while taking into account the technical, economic and environmental constraints.
Partners
2 industrials (awé scrlfs, and Dumoulin SA),
1 unit of the Université catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain – Life Sciences Institute),
2 units of the public research centre CRA-W (Walloon Agricultural Research Centre).
Funding
- Marshall Plan of the Walloon Region
