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A decision support system to evaluate the pollution potential of diets for dairy cows

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2017

E. Kebreab ,
J. A. N. Mills ,
L. A. Crompton ,
J. Dijkstra  and
J. France
E. Kebreab
Affiliation:
Biomathematics Group, School of Agriculture, Policy and Development, The University of Reading, Earley Gate, Reading RG6 6AR, UK
J. A. N. Mills
Affiliation:
Biomathematics Group, School of Agriculture, Policy and Development, The University of Reading, Earley Gate, Reading RG6 6AR, UK
L. A. Crompton
Affiliation:
Biomathematics Group, School of Agriculture, Policy and Development, The University of Reading, Earley Gate, Reading RG6 6AR, UK
J. Dijkstra
Affiliation:
WIAS Animal Nutrition, Wageningen University, Marijkeweg 40, 6709, PE Wageningen, The Netherlands
J. France
Affiliation:
Biomathematics Group, School of Agriculture, Policy and Development, The University of Reading, Earley Gate, Reading RG6 6AR, UK
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Extract

Agriculture in general, and dairy production in particular, has been identified as one of the major sources of greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental pollutants such as nitrogen (N) (as ammonia, N and Nitrous oxides, and N leaching). Availability of cheap sources of protein has led to increased consumption of protein supplements. However, the protein is often utilised inefficiently and excess nitrogen is excreted particularly in urine, which has much more potential to pollute the environment. One of the obvious ways of reducing pollution is by evaluating the pollution potential of diets and formulating more balanced rations. A few technical mathematical models have been published but rarely do they consider more than one pollutant at a time. The objective of the present study was to develop a decision support system (DSS) by first integrating mechanistic models of N (Kebreab et al., 2002) and methane (Mills et al., 2001) with a rumen model (Dijkstra, 1994) and then develop a graphical user interface (GUI) for ease of use and analysis of outputs.

Type
Lactation
Information
Proceedings of the British Society of Animal Science , Volume 2003 , 2003 , pp. 134
Copyright
Copyright © The British Society of Animal Science 2003

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References

Dijkstra, J. 1994. Simulation of the dynamics of protozoa in the rumen. British Journal of Nutrition 72: 679–699.Google Scholar
Kebreab, E., France, J., Mills, J. A. N., Allison, R. and Dijkstra, J. 2002. A dynamic model of N metabolism in the dairy cow and an assessment of impact of N excretion on the environment. Journal of Animal Science, 80: 248–259.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mills, J. A. N., Dijkstra, J., Bannink, A., Cammell, S. B., Kebreab, E. and France, J. 2001. A mechanistic model of whole-tract digestion and methanogenesis in the lactating dairy cow: Model development, evaluation, and application. Journal of Animal Science, 79: 1584–1597.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed