Invited review: Mid-infrared spectroscopy as phenotyping tool for milk traits

Abstract

Interest in methods that routinely and accurately measure and predict animal characteristics is growing in importance, both for quality characterization of livestock products and for genetic purposes. Mid-infrared spectroscopy (MIRS) is a rapid and cost-effective tool for recording phenotypes at the population level. Mid-infrared spectroscopy is based on crossing matter by electromagnetic radiation and on the subsequent measure of energy absorption, and it is commonly used to determine traditional milk quality traits in official milk laboratories. The aim of this review was to focus on the use of MIRS to predict new milk phenotypes of economic relevance such as fatty acid and protein composition, coagulation properties, acidity, mineral composition, ketone bodies, body energy status, and methane emissions. Analysis of the literature demonstrated the feasibility of MIRS to predict these traits, with different accuracies and with margins of improvement of prediction equations. In general, the reviewed papers underlined the influence of data variability, reference method, and unit of measurement on the development of robust models. A crucial point in favor of the application of MIRS is to stimulate the exchange of data among countries to develop equations that take into account the biological variability of the studied traits under different conditions. Due to the large variability of reference methods used for MIRS calibration, it is essential to standardize the methods used within and across countries.

Fatty acid composition of milk from Holstein-Friesian, Brown Swiss, Simmental and Alpine Grey cows predicted by mid-infrared spectroscopy

“…As recently reviewed by De Marchi et al (2014), the use of mid-infrared spectroscopy (MIRS) has great potentiality to predict milk FA concentration (Soyeurt et al 2008;Penasa et al 2015) as applied to a large date set in New Zealand dairy cattle with thousands of MIRS spectra from milk samples used for normal herd-testing to determine fat and protein concentration (LopezVillalobos et al 2014). The present work aimed at describing the phenotypic variation of major milk FA groups and individual FA predicted by MIRS using a large data file of four Italian cattle breeds.…”

Invited review: Large-scale indirect measurements for enteric methane emissions in dairy cattle: A review of proxies and their potential for use in management and breeding decisions

“…Milk MIR data can be obtained through regular milk recording schemes, as well as, on a herd level, through analysis used for milk payment systems. Diverse milk phenotypes can be obtained by MIR spectrometry, including detailed milk composition (e.g., FA as reported by Soyeurt et al, 2011), technological properties of milk, and cow physiological status (De Marchi et al, 2014;Gengler et al, 2016). Several of these novel traits (i.e., FA composition) have been identified as potential indicators of enteric CH 4 emission.…”

Standardization of milk mid-infrared spectrometers for the transfer and use of multiple models

“…Over the past decade, the number of research studies seeking to extract more quantitative information from the Fourier transform mid-infrared (FT-MIR) spectra has increased constantly (De Marchi et al, 2014). Equations based on the full spectrum have been developed for the determination of fine milk components such as fatty acid profiles (Soyeurt et al, 2006;Rutten et al, 2009), protein composition (Bonfatti et al, 2011), minerals (Soyeurt et al, 2009), ketone bodies (van Knegsel et al, 2010), citrate (Grelet et al, 2016), and lactoferrin (Soyeurt et al, 2007).…”