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Julie Brastrup Clasen

PhD student at the Department of Animal Breeding and Genetics

Presentation

The topic of my PhD project is crossbreeding in dairy cattle. For me, the main task is to create useful tools for farmers and breeding advisors/companies that can be used to improve herd economy as well as genetics in crossbred animals.

Research

The aim of my PhD project is to study various crossbreeding scenarios in dairy cattle for Swedish and Danish conditions and their impact on genetic improvement and herd profit. I have been a part of the development of the simulation tool, SimHerd Crossbred, and I will continue working with that for my PhD studies. I will simulate genetic and economic consequences of different crossbreeding scenarios and compare them to purebreeding scenarios. The simulations will be done on various herd types and crossbreeding strategies. Breeds included are primarily Holstein and Red Dairy Cattle, but also small breed populations or imported breeds such as Jersey, Montbéliarde and Swedish Polled. The scenarios will be used in a survey for farmers, to see how willing they are to adopt a certain scenario over another. Finally, I will be working on improvement of methods for genomic evaluation for crossbred performance.

Cooperation

The SimHerd Crossbred study is done in collaboration with researchers at Aarhus University.

Background

  • MSc Animal Science, University of Copenhagen
  • Aarhus University, working as a scientific assistant
  • SEGES, research and innovation for Danish agricultural advisory services, working as a breeding consultant

Selected publications

J.B Clasen, E. Norberg, P. Madsen, J. Pedersen and M. Kargo (2017). Estimation of genetic parameters and heterosis for longevity in crossbred Danish dairy cattle. Journal of Dairy Science, vol. 100 (8) pp: 6337-6342


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