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INRAE is the Europe’s leading Research Institute on agriculture, food, and the environment. INRAE participates to the MiCliFeed project with 2 Units a) the Research group on Herbivores (UMRH) located in Saint Genès Champanelle and b) the research unit «Interactions Hôte Agents Pathogènes» (IHAP) located in Toulouse.
UMRH research focuses on ruminant production systems especially on methane emissions, animal welfare, feeds value, and product qualities. UMRH has on-site experimental facilities for animal and feed experiments (150 ha of cultivated land, 150 cattle and 450 sheep) infrastructures to study feeding behaviour, digestion/metabolism, including systems to measure GHG in vivo and laboratories for analysis of feed and forage composition and value.
IHAP is composed of 6 scientific teams, each having expertise on different models of pathogens (virus, mycoplasmas, prions, parasites, immunology, epidemiology and economics). The unit has access on campus facilities to maintain sheep/goats in controlled conditions. Thanks to the network of universities and research institutes in Toulouse, it has access to a range of platforms of high technologies in different disciplines (eg. imaging, high flow DNA analyses).
In this project, INRAE will contribute to the farmer-participatory surveys to determine management practices in France. Then, INRAE will conduct in vitro studies to evaluate bioactive resources for their methane and ammonia reducing properties (UMRH) and anthelmintic properties (IHAP). In a second stage the most promising bioactive resources will be tested in vivo trial using growing lambs in controlled conditions (UMRH and IHAP).
This task will consist to evaluate the feeding value of prototypes of pellets and their environmental score with reference to GHG emission and nitrogen balance by small ruminants. In addition, some lambs artificially infected with nematodes will be conducted in the same conditions to explore the relationship between parasitism, animal performances and GHG emissions by measuring parasitological and pathophysiological parameters.
A PhD student (Blandine MORA) will be in charge and co-supervised by V. Niderkorn and H. Hoste.
Veterinary Research Institute (VRI)
Bio
Dr Vincent Niderkorn (UMRH) is an expert on forage value and ruminant nutrition focusing on the effect of resources containing bioactive compounds on rumen digestion, mainly in small ruminants.
He has 18 years of research experience, participated at 9 international and 7 national projects and published ~50 peer-reviewed papers (h index = 16).
Bio
Dr Hervé Hoste (IHAP) is a Senior Researcher, leading the team “Interactions Nematodes and digestive environment”. He has over 30 years research experience with ~180 peer-reviewed publications (h index= 45).
The last 20 years, his main field of research focused on the alternatives to commercial anthelmintics to control GINs in sheep/goats, in particular by exploring the concept of nutraceuticals using the model of tannin containing resources how-to use them in farm conditions.
Bio
I graduated from the University of Clermont Auvergne (Clermont-Ferrand, France) with a bachelor’s degree in Biology of Organisms, Populations and Ecosystems and a master’s degree in Microbiology with a specialization in Genome, Ecology and Physiology (2021).
I joined the LIFE MiCliFeed project in July 2022 for a PhD between the National Research Institute for Agriculture, Agronomy and the Environment (INRAE) of Clermont-Ferrand and the National Veterinary School of Toulouse (ENVT).
