Cattle adapted to tropical and subtropical environments: social, nutritional, and carcass quality considerations

Abstract

Beef production needs to increase from 60 million to 130 million tons by 2050 to feed a growing world population, and 70% of this production increase is expected from beef industries located in subtropical and tropical regions of the world. Bos indicus-influenced cattle predominate in these regions but are often managed using practices developed for Bos taurus breeds reared in temperate climates. Hence, a fundamental step to meet the increasing global demand for beef is to develop specific management for B. indicus-influenced cattle in tropical or subtropical environments. Bos taurus and B. indicus are different subspecies, and diverge in social and biological functions due to selection pressure caused by complex evolutionary and domestication processes. Bos indicus cattle display different social responses compared with B. taurus counterparts, which must be taken into account by management planning as these traits directly impact cattle performance and welfare. In tropical and subtropical regions, warm-season perennial C4 grasses are the dominant forages, and their availability has a significant influence on the productivity of beef cattle systems. The resilience of C4 grasses under adverse conditions is one of their most important characteristics, even though these forages have reduced nutritive value compared with forages from temperate climates. Accordingly, nutritional planning in tropical and subtropical conditions must include management to optimize the quantity and quality of C4 forages. Nutritional requirements of cattle raised within these conditions also require special attention, including inherent metabolic compromises to cope with environmental constraints and altered energy requirements due to body composition and heat tolerance. Nutritional interventions to enhance beef production need to be specifically tailored and validated in B. indicus-influenced cattle. As an example, supplementation programs during gestation or early life to elicit fetal programming or metabolic imprinting effects, respectively, yield discrepant outcomes between subspecies. Bos indicus-influenced cattle produce carcasses with less marbling than B. taurus cattle, despite recent genetic and management advances. This outcome is mostly related to reduced intramuscular adipocyte volume in B. indicus breeds, suggesting a lesser need for energy stored intramuscularly as a mechanism to improve thermotolerance in tropical and subtropical climates.

Prediction Accuracy Improvement of Indonesian Dairy Cattle Fiber Feed Compositions Using Near-Infrared Reflectance Spectroscopy Local Database

“…Dried ruminant fiber-source feeds database used in Buchi NIRFlex N-500 Solids Cell (NIRSID) might be developed mostly using temperate forage, which was very different from tropical forages both species and nutrient contents. The different nutrient contents of tropical and subtropical forages were might also due to the different light intensities and daylengths (Cooke et al, 2020), different forage species used and different generative stages of the plants (Sriagtula et al, 2017), and different ages at the harvesting of the plants (Puteri et al, 2015).…”

“…Initial NIRS database (NIRSID) that come together with the instrument was not only expensive but also less accurate to be used for local feedstuffs. The database provided by the instrument was developed mostly based on temperate or subtropical feedstuffs that might differ from tropical feedstuffs (Cooke et al, 2020) due to different species used, age at harvesting, and range of nutrient concentrations in the similar feedstuffs. Some unconventional fiber-source feeds used in a dairy farm in a tropical area such as rice straw, corn husk, and corn stover (Lestari et al, 2015) might have different spectrums, out of the range of the initial database, and difficult to analyze using NIRSID accurately.…”

How a typical West African day in the future-climate compares with current-climate conditions in a convection-permitting and parameterised convection climate model

“…The projected trend towards more intermittent, but intense precipitation events across West Africa could pose a problem for rearing livestock particularly in nomadic communities; however, the extent of this impact will depend on many factors including changes in water resource management. Further, the nutritional rate of livestock by-products decreases under increased exposure to high temperatures (Abdalla et al 1993;Cooke et al 2020). An increased population could require more livestock to be reared for food without social changes in dietary patterns (Cooke et al 2020), further placing stress on water resources.…”

“…Further, the nutritional rate of livestock by-products decreases under increased exposure to high temperatures (Abdalla et al 1993;Cooke et al 2020). An increased population could require more livestock to be reared for food without social changes in dietary patterns (Cooke et al 2020), further placing stress on water resources.…”

WITHDRAWN: Classification of Megathyrsus maximus Accessions Grown in The Colombian Dry Tropical Forest by Nutritional Assessment during contrasting seasons

“…These characteristics allow the measurement of livestock e ciency. They could in uence productive parameters such as consumption and milk/meat gains (Cooke et al, 2020). In addition, there is a productive seasonality of the grasslands derived from long dry rainy seasons (Gándara, et al, 2017).…”