MoSAR (Systemic Modelling applied to Ruminants)
February 11 2022UMR (Joint Research Unit) AgroParisTech, Inra
General scientific orientation
The aim of the MoSAR unit is to understand, characterise and predict the relationships between livestock and their feeding environment in order to develop tools that increase the efficiency of use of food resources whilst optimizing performance, adaptive capacity and wellbeing. The unit carries out research work in : animal nutrition, animal behaviour, rumen physiology, energy metabolism and modelling. The common research theme of this work is : the description and quantification of the processes by which ruminants obtain, ingest, digest, metabolize and partition nutrients between production and other life functions. The work is centred around lactating goats at the level of the whole-animal, but with collaborative projects that integrate the underlying levels (cellular and molecular) and higher levels of aggregation (herd, farm systems).
Fields of research
Research within MoSAR is focused on two fundamental aspects for predicting the consequences of diverse strategies in the management and genetic selection of the robustness of the animal and systems :
- Study the pre-ingestive and feeding behaviour, rumen function and digestion, as well as the interaction between these elements
- Characterise their impact on digestive efficiency and ruminal robustness Allocation of nutritional resources
- Study the regulation of nutrient partitioning between different life functions
- Characterise the dynamic of resource allocation through time, the impact of the environment on allocation and the interaction between them, in order to predict animal resilience and lifetime efficiency
To this end the unit deploys phenotyping and modelling approaches, including the study of underlying mechanisms.
Together, phenotyping and modelling contribute synergistically to the development of decision support tools particularly in the domain of precision livestock farming.
- Characterise variation between individuals in their capacity to cope with environmental perturbations
- Develop the framework for prediction of animal performance across environments and physiological stage