When MIR spectrometry helps to promote a local and vulnerable breed

The dual purpose Belgian Blue breed (DP-BB) is a vulnerable breed rooted in the tradition of the Walloon Region of Belgium. DP-BB has interesting features (e.g. robustness, good longevity and ease of calving). Due to its dual purpose type, income generated by both milk and meat is more stable and more flexible in responding to market fluctuations. Registered DP-BB cows are milk recorded (one of the conditions for them to be registered as DP-BB and therefore to get AEM subsidies). Since near 4 years, during routine milk recording, nearly all mid-infrared (MIR) spectra generated at the milk labs and the information of test-day records were collected in a database. Calibration equations using the MIR spectrometry were developed permitting the prediction of several bovine milk components (e.g., fatty acids (FA)). Their application on the MIR spectral database would allow comparing milk composition from 920 DP-BB and 52,497 Holstein cows (selected cows had a proportion of Holstein or DP-BB in their breed composition of at least 90%). On average, each cows had 6 test-day records with MIR spectra in the database. MIR predictions were analyzed using GLM procedure with 5 fixed effects (breed, herd, lactation number, month of test-day recording and lactation stage); values presented are lsmeans (± s.e.) of the breed. Although milk and fat yields were lower for DP-BB, their FA proportions in fat were different from Holstein. Indeed, there are 66.0% (0.2) and 67.6% (0.0) of saturated FA in fat of milk for DP-BB and Holstein, respectively. Furthermore, the DP-BB milk fat was richer in omega-9 (20.7% (0.2) vs. 19.6% (0.0) for DP-BB and Holstein, respectively). Use of MIR predictions may help stakeholders to promote milk and future dairy products from DP-BB.