Swiss organic dairy farmer survey: Which path for the organic cow in the future?

The survey showed a high interest of the Swiss organic dairy farmers in breeding, suggesting that there is potential to breed an adapted organic dairy cow. However, it is clear that it would be difficult to breed an “organic dairy cow” that would be suitable for all farms. The differences between farms, particularly between mountain areas and valley regions, were notable. As a result, each farm manager has to specify criteria and breeding goals essential for his or her farm and try to pursue and reach these goals with the available services. Existing tools, like the EBI, are widely considered as helpful, but have to be improved with new knowledge, and further possibilities should be developed. The modern dairy cow for the organic sector must have a long productive lifespan, good milk yield and milk protein content, requiring little or no concentrate, and a low somatic cell count. In the future, FiBL will analyse anonymized herd book data of organic dairy farms. This should show whether the figures of the inquiry are confirmed or whether new perceptions become evident. FiBL also plan to discuss the results with representatives of breeding organizations and genetics associations as well as with interested organic dairy breeders, in order to evaluate the need of change and take action if necessary

The condensation phase transition in the regular kk-SAT model

Much of the recent work on random constraint satisfaction problems has been inspired by ingenious but non-rigorous approaches from physics. The physics predictions typically come in the form of distributional fixed point problems that are intended to mimic Belief Propagation, a message passing algorithm, applied to the random CSP. In this paper we propose a novel method for harnessing Belief Propagation directly to obtain a rigorous proof of such a prediction, namely the existence and location of a condensation phase transition in the random regular $k$-SAT model.Comment: Revised version based on arXiv:1504.03975, version

LowInputBreeds: Ein grosses Projekt – vielfältige Erkenntnisse

Braunvieh Schweiz nahm während fünf Jahren an einem grossen EU-Forschungsprojekt teil. Dieses setzte sich zum Ziel, funktionelle Merkmale und die Produktequalität mittels genomischer Selektion und Management zu verbessern. Das Projekt wurde 2014 erfolgreich abgeschlossen

Jeder Betrieb muss sein eigenes Zuchtziel haben

Züchten ist mehr als nur eine gute Stierenwahl treffen. Ebenso wichtig ist es, die Möglichkeiten und Grenzen des Betriebes realistisch einzuschätzen. Besonders in der Rindviehzucht können auf dem einzelnen Biobetrieb ansehnliche Erfolge verbucht werden, auch wenn es im Moment noch kein speziell auf den Biolandbau zugeschnittenes Zuchtprogramm gibt. Beat Bapst von der FiBL-Fachgruppe Tierhaltung und Tierzucht setzt sich intensiv mit der Entwicklung einer Rindviehzucht für den biologischen Landbau auseinander. Leistungen spielen dabei zwar auch eine Rolle, aber nielosgelöst, sondern eingebettet ist die Verhältnisse des Betriebs

Swiss Brown Swiss in different environments: Does GxE play an important role?

Estimations of genotype by environment interactions have been carried out for Brown Swiss dairy cattle in Switzerland. Yield traits were considered as different traits in different environments. Genetic correlations were then estimated for the same trait in different environments. First results from bivariate analyses showed that genotype by environment interactions might exist in the investigated population, especially for fat yield and protein yield. Further analyses are needed to prove genotype by environment interactions in Brown Swiss cattle in Switzerland

The Quantum Adiabatic Algorithm applied to random optimization problems: the quantum spin glass perspective

Among various algorithms designed to exploit the specific properties of quantum computers with respect to classical ones, the quantum adiabatic algorithm is a versatile proposition to find the minimal value of an arbitrary cost function (ground state energy). Random optimization problems provide a natural testbed to compare its efficiency with that of classical algorithms. These problems correspond to mean field spin glasses that have been extensively studied in the classical case. This paper reviews recent analytical works that extended these studies to incorporate the effect of quantum fluctuations, and presents also some original results in this direction.Comment: 151 pages, 21 figure