Digital phenotyping technologies: an emerging tool in genomic selection and animal welfare science?

Abstract

Farm animals provide about 30% of humanity’s food requirements [1]. The world’s population’s demand for animal products is expected to keep growing. New technologies in animal husbandry can make it possible to meet this demand and to reduce its impact on the environment. Genomic selection plays a key role in this process as a promising and safe method for improving genetic qualities of farm animals. Before the widespread of genomic selection, high cost of genotyping was the main factor holding back an improvement of animal farming. However, today, the bottleneck in genomic selection is a limited amount of high-quality phenotypic data, which is still either difficult or too costly to obtain [2]. New technologies in animal phenotyping become of special attention. The current paper reviews the next-generation technologies in animal phenotyping and revels the main challenges limiting its widespread in the example of dairy cattle.