Paul Kenyon
Institute of Vet, Animal and Biomedical Sciences, Massey University, Palmerston North
It is now well established in humans that the in utero environment can have long term consequences for the offspring. Due to the difficulty of undertaking intervention studies in humans, rodents and sheep have often been used as models. These studies have provided insight into the potential mechanism behind some of the effects observed in human epidemiological studies. These studies have tended to be at the basic biological level.
In the last 15 years there has also been increased interest in determining if the in utero environment can affect the productive performance of agricultural species. If this is found to be the case, it could lead to the development of management strategies to improve the productive performance of future generations and improve farmer income. Approximately 39% of ’s export earnings come from production animals suggesting significant financial benefits if management strategies which favourably manipulate fetal programming could be developed.
Research programmes examining potential fetal programming effects in production animals have differing requirements to those studies which use animals as a human model. The interventions tested must be ‘realistic’ for the production system being investigated and large numbers of animals are required to examine for the productive phenotype. In addition, these studies tend to require the productive phenotype to be found before the underlying mechanism is sought. Any potential fetal programming manipulations/interventions have to be cost effective if they are to be utilised by the industry.
Gravida is unique in the world as it includes a mix of basic and animal production scientists and has access to large numbers of production animals and valuable links with industry. Current paradigms that are being investigated by Gravida include the effects of dam age, dam size and nutrition in pregnancy and birth rank. These studies are examining the economically important traits of reproduction, lactation and meat production.