Exploring the role of the rumen microbiota in determining the feed efficiency of dairy cows

Abstract

Expanding world hunger calls for increasing available food resources. Ruminants have the remarkable ability to convert human-indigestible plant biomass into human-digestible food products, due to a complex microbiome residing in the rumen compartment of their upper digestive tract. One way to tackle the problem of diminishing food resources is to increase the animals' energetic efficiency, i.e., the efficiency with which they convert energy from feed, thereby increasing food availability while lowering the environmental burden, as these animals would produce more and eat less. We hypothesize that the cow's feed efficiency is dependent on the taxonomic composition, coding capacity and activity of its reticulorumenmicrobiota. To test this hypothesis, three aims are defined: (1) Evaluation of the feed efficiency of 146 dairy cows and defining two groups representing the highest and lowest 25% using the Israeli group's unique facility; (2) Comparing these two groups for microbiota diversity, identity and coding capacity using next-generation sequencing and metagenomic approaches; (3) Comparing the reticulorumenmicrobiota metabolic activity parameters. We measured feed efficiency in 146 milking cows and analyzed the taxonomic composition, gene content, microbial activity and metabolomic composition of rumen microbiomes from the 78 most extreme animals. Lower richness of microbiome gene content and taxa was tightly linked to higher feed efficiency. Microbiome genes and species accurately predicted the animals' feed-efficiency phenotype. Specific enrichment of microbes and metabolic pathways in each of these microbiome groups resulted in increasing valuable metabolites and decreasing unusable ones such as methane in efficient animals. This ecological and mechanistic understanding of the rumen microbiome could lead to an increase in available food resources and environmentally friendly livestock agriculture.