{"id":909,"date":"2019-08-05T09:31:28","date_gmt":"2019-08-05T09:31:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/horizon.peachpuff-wolverine-566518.hostingersite.com\/?p=909"},"modified":"2019-08-05T09:31:28","modified_gmt":"2019-08-05T09:31:28","slug":"coming-to-a-farm-near-you-the-humble-microbe-boosting-europes-food-industry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/horizon\/909\/coming-to-a-farm-near-you-the-humble-microbe-boosting-europes-food-industry\/","title":{"rendered":"Coming to a farm near you: The humble microbe boosting Europe\u2019s food industry"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By: Alex Whiting<\/p>\n

Farmers who want to produce bigger chickens, fewer greenhouse gas-filled cow burps or healthier animals are increasingly able to turn to one tiny source: microbes.<\/strong><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The microbes \u2013 which include a plethora of bacteria, viruses and fungi \u2013 have existed for billions of years and live everywhere including in people\u2019s and animals\u2019 guts.<\/p>\n

Although probiotics, which contain microbes, and prebiotics, which encourage the growth of microbes in animals\u2019 guts, are already used in the food sector with the aim of optimising animal health and growth, there is little understanding of how microorganisms and animals interact.<\/p>\n

\u2018It\u2019s quite unbelievable but \u2026 the way probiotics and prebiotics are discovered is by trial and error,\u2019 said Dr Antton Alberdi, assistant professor at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark.<\/p>\n

\u2018Someone will say: \u201cThis microbial strain looks really good, so let\u2019s try giving it to 10,000 chickens.\u201d Usually there is almost no tracking what happens inside the animal.\u2019<\/p>\n

Dr Alberdi is scientific manager of a project called\u00a0HoloFood<\/a>, which aims to strengthen the evidence surrounding microbes and how they interact with animals, and help companies develop more effective products.<\/p>\n

Eventually companies could make more targeted products for farmed animals that use microbes to improve the ratio of muscle to fat, make animals less stressed, stop them from getting infections, or make them grow larger with less food.<\/p>\n

Environment<\/strong><\/p>\n

The idea is that if plants and intensively farmed animals need fewer resources \u2013 like food, antibiotics, chemical inputs \u2013 and there is less waste caused by disease and spoilage, it will decrease pressure on the environment.<\/p>\n

\u2018It is about meeting the need for cheap protein in a way that\u2019s environmentally responsible,\u2019 said Tom Gilbert, professor of palaeogenomics at the University of Copenhagen, who leads HoloFood.<\/p>\n

\u2018The more efficient the food conversion \u2026 the less polluting it is,\u2019 he added.<\/p>\n

Europeans eat\u00a0twice as much meat<\/a>\u00a0per person now compared to 50 years ago, and the pressure is on to provide people with quality food using fewer resources.<\/p>\n

\u2018There\u2019s always going to be critics who say we shouldn\u2019t eat meat \u2026 But if we assume there\u2019s never going to be a dictator of the world making everyone vegetarian\u2026 then of course we\u2019ve got to find the best solution we can,\u2019 said Prof. Gilbert.<\/p>\n

Holofood scientists are studying microbes in intensively farmed salmon and chicken, using high throughput DNA sequencing technologies to analyse samples of the fish and meat.\u00a0The idea is to investigate\u00a0whether the genetics of chickens or salmon impacts the effectiveness of a particular microbe.<\/p>\n

The technologies, which enable scientists to quickly sequence huge amounts of DNA, have only recently become affordable enough to use in large-scale trials.<\/p>\n

Genetics<\/strong><\/p>\n

Selecting the right genetic strain of animal could make a significant difference because of the large numbers of animals involved, the scientists say.<\/p>\n

A single salmon farm in Norway, where HoloFood fish tests are carried out, can comprise 2 million fish. \u2018Even if you increase the average size (of a fish) by 100 grams that\u2019s a huge financial difference,\u2019 said Prof. Gilbert.<\/p>\n

The research will be of use to many people in the food sector \u2013 not just those working on salmon and chickens \u2013 the Holofood scientists say.<\/p>\n

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‘It is about meeting the need for cheap protein in a way that\u2019s environmentally responsible.’<\/p>\n

Professor Tom Gilbert, University of Copenhagen, Denmark<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

\u2018If we can find that a single mutant in a chicken leads to a microbiome change, and we can show how it does that, we\u2019ve then got a model that can be applied in many other systems whether it\u2019s human health, or plant production,\u2019 Prof. Gilbert said, referring to the genetic composition of the population of microbes in an animal.<\/p>\n

The techniques they have developed to sample, process and analyse huge quantities of data in their tests, as well as much of the data itself, will be useful for academics, companies developing prebiotics and probiotics, and animal breeders, he said.<\/p>\n

As well as making meat production more efficient, microbes could also help cut food waste by protecting plants and animals from disease and preventing food from going bad before it reaches people\u2019s homes. In the EU, about\u00a088 million tonnes<\/a>\u00a0of food waste are generated annually \u2013 about\u00a020%<\/a>\u00a0of the total food produced.<\/p>\n

\u2018We\u2019re looking at microbes that stop other microbes (associated with) diseases in plants and crops,\u2019 said Dr Paul Cotter, head of food biosciences at the Teagasc Food Research Centre in Ireland.<\/p>\n

\u2018We\u2019re (also) looking at preservation strains that can be put onto the surface of fish to stop contamination \u2026 so the fish will have a longer shelf life and also be safer,\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n

Dr Cotter is the coordinator of a project called\u00a0MASTER<\/a>\u00a0which brings together academics and industry to help get a wide range of new microbe-based products to market. These use microbes to boost plant, soil and animal health and cut the need for insecticides, fertilisers and antibiotics.<\/p>\n

MASTER scientists are studying microbes that remove nematodes and disease-causing microorganisms that attack barley and wheat crops. \u2018We have some microbes that will help plant defences and will also kill those (undesirable) microorganisms,\u2019 Dr Cotter said.<\/p>\n

They are also about to lead a large-scale test on \u2018desirable microorganisms\u2019 that could remove disease from fish farms, \u2018making for less waste but also better products and safer products\u2019, he said.<\/p>\n

Other microbes under study include those that may help produce health-boosting fermented foods, or even reduce greenhouse gas emissions from cattle and other ruminants.<\/p>\n

\u2018If we can kill those methane-producing microbes – either through the introduction of other microbes or specific types of food – then there\u2019s a great deal of benefit that can be gained from that,\u2019 Dr Cotter added.<\/p>\n

The research in this article was funded by the EU. If you liked this article, please consider sharing it on social media.<\/em><\/p>\n

Originally published on Horizon<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By: Alex Whiting Farmers who want to produce bigger chickens, fewer greenhouse gas-filled cow burps or healthier animals are increasingly able to turn to one tiny source: microbes. The microbes \u2013 which include a plethora of bacteria, viruses and fungi \u2013 have existed for billions of years and live everywhere including in people\u2019s and animals\u2019 … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":298,"featured_media":910,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,12],"tags":[2,172,169,24],"class_list":["post-909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-earth-energy-environment","category-health","tag-agriculture","tag-dna","tag-frontier-research","tag-science"],"yoast_head":"\nComing to a farm near you: The humble microbe boosting Europe\u2019s food industry - Horizon Magazine Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/horizon\/909\/coming-to-a-farm-near-you-the-humble-microbe-boosting-europes-food-industry\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Coming to a farm near you: The humble microbe boosting Europe\u2019s food industry\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By: Alex Whiting Farmers who want to produce bigger chickens, fewer greenhouse gas-filled cow burps or healthier animals are increasingly able to turn to one tiny source: microbes. 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