Faculty of Technical Sciences

The SmartCow project (H2020 N°730924; https://www.smartcow.eu/) integrates key European cattle research infrastructures (RIs) to promote their coordinated use and development, and thereby help the European cattle sector face the challenge of sustainable production. SmartCow RIs cover the diversity of cattle types and production systems (dairy vs beef, extensive vs intensive). They benefit from strong scientific and technical skills in animal physiology and behaviour, and in ethics in animal experimentation. Thanks to networking activities, SmartCow developed a book of methods to harmonize experimental procedures in cattle physiology and behaviour, improved animal trait ontology
to standardize the vocabulary and built a cloud-based data-platform to facilitate data sharing and interoperability. Joint research activities were conducted to refine reference methods in cattle nutrition, produce proxies to evaluate
feed efficiency, nitrogen and enteric methane emissions, and new methods to exploit data from sensors monitoring animal behaviour. SmartCow transnational access activity provided academic and private research communities with easy access to 11 major RIs from 7 countries for around 10,000 experimental cow-weeks distributed in 24 research projects. A Stakeholder Platform composed of pre- and post-farm gate industry, farmer organizations and policy makers at national and EU levels, and a training program targeted to young scientists supported the dissemination of SmartCow outcomes. This session will highlight how SmartCow improved RIs phenotyping capacities and services to foster innovation in the European cattle sector towards ethical solutions for efficient use of animal and feed resources that promote animal welfare and healthy livestock.