Incorporating temperament traits in dairy cattle breeding programs: challenges and opportunities in the phenomics era

Cattle temperament can be described based on reactivity to human handling, novel objects, or stressful situations. Despite its economic and welfare implications, there is a lack of objective indicator traits and limited incorporation of temperament in dairy cattle breeding programs. The increased intensifcation of dairy production systems, including the adoption of robotic milking machines and automatic feeders, is contributing to a growing interest to selectively breed for improved temperament and milking effciency. The main challenges for wider incorporation of temperament in dairy breeding programs are the defnition of indicator traits, large-scale phenotyping, lack of understanding of the genetic background of the traits, and availability of the economic values of temperament. Genomics combined with high-throughput phenotyping will be essential to optimize selection for improved temperament traits in dairy cattle. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/af/article-abstract/10/2/29/5814667 by SCOPUS EFLOWD user on 20 May 202. © Chang, Brito, Alvarenga, and Wang.