102,544 research outputs found
Breeding goats for organic production in Germany
No full textWith only 120,000 females (year 2000), goat keeping is a niche activity in animal husbandry in Germany. Most of the goats (about 90%) are kept on part-time farms. The main reasons they are kept are as a hobby, for milk production and for landscape management; in many cases it is a non-profit oriented activity. There are estimates (no official statistics exist) that 20,000 goats are milked and 10,000 are used in landscape management to avoid shrub succession on protected biotopes. In the year 2000 10% of the goats (12,000) were kept on organic farms but not all for economic reasons.
Because the dairy breeds in Germany (White and Brown German Alpine) are selected under intensive keeping conditions, breeding under the restrictions of organic farming is necessary to get adopted and high yielding flocks. This is even more true in the case of harsh environmental conditions in landscape management. The German breeds are not suitable for the needs while grazing on marginal biotopes. This paper will show some results of:
· a ten-year breeding programme for more milk ingredients, fat and protein, in a flock of 30 mother goats on an organic farm and
· the breeding programme of the “Witzenhäuser Landschaftspflegeziege WLZ” for the new purposes of landscape management
Options to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from enteric fermentation and manure handling in dairy farming – An analysis based on farm network data
No full textIn the project ‘Climate effects and Sustainability of Organic and Conventional Farming Systems’ dairy farms in Germany were analysed for their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions based on the whole process chain (Hülsbergen and Rahmann, 2013). This article focuses on the main GHG from dairy production. The most important source is methane (CH4) from enteric fermentation of the cows. Second important are the GHG from livestock manure: CH4, nitrous oxide (N2O) and indirect N2O-emissions (N2Oindirect) by ammonia (NH3) deposition on soils. They are determined by manure composition, manure management in stables and storage and by excreta of grazing animals dropped on pasture. The results from organic and conventional dairy farms are presented. A view on limits of modelling approaches based on practical farm data is given. Some practical advices for farm management to produce climate friendlier milk are concluded
Reliable transfer of transcriptional gene regulatory networks between taxonomically related organisms
No full textBaumbach J, Rahmann S, Tauch A. Reliable transfer of transcriptional gene regulatory networks between taxonomically related organisms. BMC Systems Biology. 2009;3(1):8.Background: Transcriptional regulation of gene activity is essential for any living organism. Transcription factors therefore recognize specific binding sites within the DNA to regulate the expression of particular target genes. The genome-scale reconstruction of the emerging regulatory networks is important for biotechnology and human medicine but cost-intensive, time-consuming, and impossible to perform for any species separately. By using bioinformatics methods one can partially transfer networks from well-studied model organisms to closely related species. However, the prediction quality is limited by the low level of evolutionary conservation of the transcription factor binding sites, even within organisms of the same genus. Results: Here we present an integrated bioinformatics workflow that assures the reliability of transferred gene regulatory networks. Our approach combines three methods that can be applied on a large-scale: re-assessment of annotated binding sites, subsequent binding site prediction, and homology detection. A gene regulatory interaction is considered to be conserved if (1) the transcription factor, (2) the adjusted binding site, and (3) the target gene are conserved. The power of the approach is demonstrated by transferring gene regulations from the model organism Corynebacterium glutamicum to the human pathogens C. diphtheriae, C. jeikeium, and the biotechnologically relevant C. efficiens. For these three organisms we identified reliable transcriptional regulations for similar to 40% of the common transcription factors, compared to similar to 5% for which knowledge was available before. Conclusion: Our results suggest that trustworthy genome-scale transfer of gene regulatory networks between organisms is feasible in general but still limited by the level of evolutionary conservation
T-Reg Comparator: an analysis tool for the comparison of position weight matrices
No full textRöpcke S, Grossmann S, Rahmann S, Vingron M. T-Reg Comparator: an analysis tool for the comparison of position weight matrices. Nucleic Acids Research. 2005;33(Web Server):W438-W441.T-Reg Comparator is a novel software tool designed to support research into transcriptional regulation. Sequence motifs representing transcription factor binding sites are usually encoded as position weight matrices. The user inputs a set of such weight matrices or binding site sequences and our program matches them against the T-Reg database, which is presently built on data from the Transfac [E. Wingender (2004) In Silico Biol., 4, 55-61] and Jaspar [A. Sandelin, W. Alkema, P. Engstrom, W. W. Wasserman and B. Lenhard (2004) Nucleic Acids Res., 32, D91-D94]. Our tool delivers a detailed report on similarities between user-supplied motifs and motifs in the database. Apart from simple one-to-one relationships, T-Reg Comparator is also able to detect similarities between submatrices. In addition, we provide a user interface to a program for sequence scanning with weight matrices. Typical areas of application for T-Reg Comparator are motif and regulatory module finding and annotation of regulatory genomic regions. T-Reg Comparator is available at http://treg.molgen.mpg.de
Going towards Organic 3.0
No full textOrganic 3.0 discussions have released a discussion about the future development of the Organic sector (Rahmann et al. 2016). There are many think tanks started ideas (Arbenz et al. 2017). Most of the ideas are very rough and not with practical visions for research. But there should be no time lost, that Organic takes the leadership for innovations, that helps to tackle with the future challenges, to design clear pathways to be more sustainable: food supply and to have ownership for the definition of ecology, health, care, fair and quality
FATTY ACID COMPOSITION OF ORGANIC GOAT KID MEAT FROM DAIRY GOAT AND CROSSBRED MEAT GOAT KIDS
No full textIn contrast to the increasing demand for dairy goat products in Germany, a market for goat kid meat as a related product does not exist. Thus, the objective of this study was to develop a concept for organic goat kid meat production for dairy goat farms. In collaboration with a wholesaler, organic dairy goat farmers and marketing research the experimental part of this study was to find out if cross-breeding of meat-goats could improve meat quality and performance of fattening goat kids together with other factors like concentrate ratio of the diet, genotype, sex, housing vs. pasture as well as raising strategy during milk feeding period. Our results indicate that even a low input level of concentrates (10 % of total dry matter intake per goat kid and year) is sufficient to achieve the requested carcass weight of 12 kg at slaughter when goat kids are kept on pasture. Dressing percentage in both experimental years was affected by concentrate level, the more concentrates (40 %) the higher dressing percentage. Comparing years 2011 and 2012, dressing percentage was 4 % higher in 2012 for both concentrate levels. Daily weight gain per kid ranged from 122 to 133 g/d significantly influenced by concentrate level and sex, in 2011 as well by genotype. A low concentrate level (KF10) resulted in higher contents of Omega 3 fatty acids, male KF10-goat kids had highest omega 3 content of 1.19 g/100 fatty acid. The raising of “Capretto” type kids for slaughter indicated, that artificial rearing of kids using cow milk is beneficial compared to mother bonded rearing.
Results indicated, that rearing and fattening of goat kids even under low input production levels on pasture can be realized und will produce higher meat qualities regarding fatty acid composition
Spuren- und Mengenelement-Gehalte in Laubfutter
No full textLeaves are an important resource of feed stuff for many ruminants (e.g. browsing in extensive grazing systems with access of animals to shrubs and trees). The contents of minerals and trace elements of leaves from trees and shrubs are not known. In 2002, leaves of about 30 northern German (Schleswig-Holstein) shrubs and trees were analysed for minerals and trace elements. The results show that the leaves of the different shrubs have different values. Leaves can be an important source of minerals and trace elements for ruminant diets
Standortanpassung durch Nachbau und Auslese im landwirtschaftlichen Betrieb - eine Studie mit Landsorten der Linse
No full textAccurate and robust phylogeny estimation based on profile distances: a study of the Chlorophyceae (Chlorophyta)
No full textMüller T, Rahmann S, Dandekar T, Wolf M. Accurate and robust phylogeny estimation based on profile distances: a study of the Chlorophyceae (Chlorophyta). BMC Evolutionary Biology. 2004;4(1): 20.Background: In phylogenetic analysis we face the problem that several subclade topologies are known or easily inferred and well supported by bootstrap analysis, but basal branching patterns cannot be unambiguously estimated by the usual methods (maximum parsimony (MP), neighbor-joining (NJ), or maximum likelihood (ML)), nor are they well supported. We represent each subclade by a sequence profile and estimate evolutionary distances between profiles to obtain a matrix of distances between subclades. Results: Our estimator of profile distances generalizes the maximum likelihood estimator of sequence distances. The basal branching pattern can be estimated by any distance-based method, such as neighbor-joining. Our method (profile neighbor-joining, PNJ) then inherits the accuracy and robustness of profiles and the time efficiency of neighbor-joining. Conclusions: Phylogenetic analysis of Chlorophyceae with traditional methods (MP, NJ, ML and MrBayes) reveals seven well supported subclades, but the methods disagree on the basal branching pattern. The tree reconstructed by our method is better supported and can be confirmed by known morphological characters. Moreover the accuracy is significantly improved as shown by parametric bootstrap
FATTY ACID COMPOSITION OF GOAT MILK PRODUCED UNDER WITH DIFFERENT FEEDING REGIMES AND THE IMPACT ON GOAT CHEESE
No full textRuminants and their great ability to live and produce on a diet rich in fibre have a great potential to contribute to a healthy and sustainable human nutrition (Hofmann 1989). Sadly, only in times of rising energy prices the following question is asked: How much food can we afford to feed to animals? Taking this aspect into account it is necessary to do as much research as possible on the topic of “Feed no Food” in ruminants’ nutrition. The Thuenen-Institute of Organic Farming in Trenthorst, Germany, has started 2009 the project “Feed less Food” with the dairy goats on the organic experimental station in Trenthorst, Holstein, Northern Germany.
The main questions where the impact of reduced concentrate feed on animal welfare, milk yield and milk / milk product quality. In 2012, the main focus was laid on lactation performance and quality traits, defined as the occurrence of essential, to humans’ health contributing fatty acids.
Goat milk and its products can contribute to a healthy human nutrition. Yet, we know relatively little about feedstuffs, influencing goat milk yield and its composition. “Feed no Food” is one of the major fields of research of the Thuenen-Institute of Organic Farming (TI) in Trenthorst, Germany. In 2012 two feeding groups were formed and dairy goats received either an estimated 10% or 40% of the total feed intake as concentrates (KF 10 and KF 40).
Goats of KF 40 showed a significantly higher 240-day performance (P < 0.05) for the following traits: milk kg, fat kg and protein kg. No significant difference between groups was found for fat and protein content. Furthermore, no significant difference occurred in fatty acid pattern of milk. Short and medium chain fatty acids turned out to be significantly increased in cheese from KF 40. Long chain and polyunsaturated fatty acids occurred significantly more in cheese from goats of KF 10, as well as rumenic acid (CLA) and Ω-3 fatty acids. Ratio of Ω-6:Ω-3 proved to be significantly lower in cheese from KF 10. No significant differences between groups were detected for mean live weights
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