Nearly all 44 project partners from science and economy came to the 1st annual meeting of D4Dairy on 22.5.2019 at the CSH in Vienna. The president of the CSH and this year's host of the meeting, Professor DDr. Stefan Thurner, presented the tasks of the CSH. "One of the main tasks of the CSH is to process and analyse such large amounts of data and then make meaningful forecasts in the sense of n=all. Through the D4Dairy project, we can carry out complex analyses and identify interrelationships by combining data from a wide variety of areas. The large amount of data allows us to recognize unexpected correlations. In the best case, new parameters for the early detection of diseases and their progression can be identified, i.e. preventive health care for cattle. We might be able to do something like 'personalized medicine' for cows, with much better data than for humans," says the 2017 scientist.

2 Areas, 9 Projects

In order to work through such a comprehensive network in a well-structured manner, this project under consortium leader Dr. Christa Egger-Danner is divided into two areas, which on the one hand are managed by Priv.-Doz. Dr. Birgit Fürst-Waltl (BOKU, Institute for Animal Sciences) and Prof. Dr. Thomas Wittek (VetMedUni Vienna, University Clinic for Ruminants). The areas themselves are in turn divided into nine subprojects. Each subproject was given time during the presentation of the current progress of the project to obtain an up-to-date overview. The nine subprojects cover the areas of digitisation, data integration, setting up interfaces, online tools to improve herd management, promotion of measures to reduce the use of antibiotics, big data analyses for the early detection of diseases using genetic markers or infrared spectral data from milk, effects of the stable climate on performance, health and animal welfare, further development in the field of genetics and genomics, detection of mycotoxins in animal feed and effects on milk yield and fertility, the area of data protection and the area of knowledge transfer in order to make the research results available to a broad basis.

This should be achieved

"In order to achieve added value for farmers, one of D4Dairy's main goals is to network information along the milk value chain and generate synergies for all project partners involved. Improved communication and data exchange between systems on the farm and external data aims to ensure that each data set only has to be entered once. Through data consolidation and complex analyses, new and extensive knowledge on animal health and animal welfare should be gained", says Dr. Christa Egger-Danner(ZuchtData), head of the D4Dairy consortium. The Vienna Complexity Science Hub (CSH) is in demand for such data volumes in order to generate benefits from the extensive information. This should provide new and better parameters for breeding, which in turn should flow into the breeding value estimation. The findings from the project should provide better tools for the early detection of diseases and the optimisation of herd management (feeding ...), which will be made available to the farmer by means of practicable software tools. This will enable Austrian agriculture to position itself on the international market with its strengths such as high animal health, low use of antibiotics and ecological footprint.