Irish geneticist recognised for work on improving dairy cattle productivity
Dr Wall’s role in developing the UK fertility index has helped reverse the 20-year decline in reproductive performance of UK dairy cattle.
The index was recently cited as one of the greatest achievements of the SRUC Scotland’s Rural College, where Dr Wall is the Reader in Integrative Animal Sciences.
She was recently awarded the BSAS Sir John Hammond Award for scientists in the early to mid-part of their career who have made a significant contribution to animal science and production.
She has also worked on the Profitable Lifetime Index (PLI), used by dairy farmers planning long-term breeding strategies. Use of the PLI by UK dairy farmers has been estimated to increase profitability by about £120 million, and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the sector by about 1.7% per annum.
Accepting the award, Dr Wall said animal science was entering an exciting time which presented many opportunities for scientists and producers.
“We have come through a period when agriculture was not necessarily at the top of the economic or research agenda,” she said. “However, the global challenges we face are huge as we strive to meet the food demands of a rising population with the development of emerging economies but competing for land, water and energy.”
Dr Wall is a native of Cabra, Dublin 7, and was educated at UCD.
An international award has gone to FUMzyme, a purified enzyme from the Biomin company to detoxify mycotoxins in animal feeds. Judges for the AllAboutFeed/FIAAP Animal Nutrition Award said mycotoxins are an immense problem in the feed industry, and will become an even bigger problem in the near future, making products that target these toxins very necessary.
The enzyme product from Biomin works on a very important type of mycotoxins, the fumonisins.
Climate change and international trade in raw materials are two of several factors blamed for rising fumonisin contamination of feed all over the world. For example, 26,800 parts per billion of naturally occurring fumonisins were recently found in the US in dried distillers grains with solubles, a maize ethanol by-product and important animal feed.
FUMzyme was successfully introduced to the Asian market in 2013. In Europe and the US, its registration as a mycotoxin deactivation product is in progress.
The awards runner-up was Kemzyme MAP from the Kemin company, a multi-enzyme designed to improve the digestibility of feed raw materials by a value of up to $8 per tonne of feed.
