Announcement for a Competitive Call for Additional Project Partners in the LowInputBreeds Project

(August 31, 2010) The LowInputBreeds project, active in the Seventh Framework Programme of the European Community for research, technological development and demonstration activities (2007-2013), requires the participation of 3 new project partners to carry out specific tasks within the project that will be further on described.

About the LowInputBreeds project

• Project contract number: 222623
• Project acronym: LowInputBreeds
• Project full name: Development of integrated livestock breeding and management strategies to improve animal health, product quality and performance in European organic and “low input” milk, meat and egg production
• Instrument type: Large collaborative project
• Project duration: 2009 - 2014

Summary of tasks

The call is to recruit partners to collaborate in the dairy and beef cattle sub-project (SP1, Improving “Low Input” dairy cattle) of the LowInputBreeds project. The main objective of this sub-project is to simulate the day to day operations in a dairy cattle herd. For the day to day operations in the herd, different sizes and types of operations within herds, i.e. breeding strategies, age structures and culling decisions have to be considered following probabilities of occurrence. The individual variability of a cow will be simulated for a multitude of traits (production, health, growth, type traits, fertility, survival, feed intake). Based on daily phenotypic values, input and output in terms of energy efficiency will be determined for different low input production systems.

Three additional partners from International Cooperation Partner Countries (ICPC) in the Mediterranean, North Eastern Europe, Northern Africa and Middle East regions are being recruited to:

1. support the project with substantial data of interest:

• the main interest is in phenotypic data on beef traits of dairy cattle (weaning weight, growth rate, feed intake, etc …);
• additionally, phenotypic test day records for dairy traits are considered;
• any other available phenotypic data on dairy cattle; corresponding pedigrees;

2. provide detailed information related to breeding strategies (outline of the breeding program);

3. provide detailed information about herd parameters (herd size, culling rates within herds, culling strategies).

Technical/administrative information

The main decision for recruiting partners will be based on data quantity and data quality.

• Expected duration of participation in the sub-project: from November 1 2010 to February 29, 2012
• Estimated costs and funding for each of the 3 partners
• Research costs: € 40’000-60’000 per partner (supported by EU funding of 75 - 50%)
• Total Commission funding available: € 90’000 (€30’000 for each partner)
• Language in which proposals should be submitted: English
• Date of close of call: 6 October 2010
• Time of close of call: 12:00 (Bruxelles time)
• Web address for further information: www.lowinputbreeds.org
• Mail address for further information: filippo.biscarini(at)agr.uni-goettingen.de

More information

Application Form

• Application form (22 KB)

Contact

• Filippo Biscarini
  Department für Nutztierwissenschaften
  Georg-Thaer-Weg, 3
  37075 Göttingen
  Germany
  Tel. +49 551395510
  E-mail

Links

• CORDIS.lu: Project call for additional partners in the area of agricultural research at the CORDIS homepage