Understanding microbiomes of the ruminant holobiont.

The goal of HoloRuminant is to elucidate the role of ruminant-associated microbiomes and their interplay with the host animal in early life and throughout fundamental life events (e.g.weaning, feed transitions and lactation) that are known to affect health, welfare and environmental efficiency in ruminant production systems. Rooted in the holobiont concept–the host and its associated microbiomes as a functional unit –HoloRuminant will use a holistic multi-omics approach to characterise the establishment and dynamics of microbiomes. In this way, HoloRuminant will determine the connectivity between microbiomes from different body sites, their heritability, and their influence on the host’s key performance indices (KPIs) of efficiency of production, growth, resistance to disease, methane emissions, carbon footprint, and phenotypic resilience to changing environmental conditions.