Animal Breeding in the age of Big Data and Artificial Intelligence – challenges and opportunities

Adoption of genomic data for prediction of breeding values has become commonplace thanks to the rapid advances of genomic molecular technologies and statistical computational methods. Farmers and breeders now make faster and better decisions based on the actual DNA of an animal. Although industry adoption still varies widely between commodities, the more structured production systems have embraced the technology and have seen the rates of genetic gain improve dramatically. But once again well-established systems are poised for disruption as new technologies and environmental challenges emerge. The most topical of these is probably Artificial Intelligence which is expected to have a profound impact across most human endeavors. However, beyond AI, a myriad of new emerging technologies such as onsite and low pass sequencing, sensors, computer vision and blockchain technologies could also be transformative for livestock production – although there are many challenges that need to be overcome to fully explore their potential. One thing they all have is common is a high computational burden, which requires novel approaches for storing, handling, analyzing and making sense of these data types. This talk will discuss some of the opportunities and challenges of working with large sequence datasets, applications of onsite sequencing in animal production, computer vision for meat quality prediction, AI for genomic prediction, supply chain adoption of blockchains for carbon emission mitigation and adoption of enviromics for animal breeding and prediction.

Contact : 
Cedric Gondro – Michigan State University, USA