NITROGEN ISOTOPIC FRACTIONATION IN TAIL HAIR

• Grant number: 24/16738-3
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: March 01, 2025
• End date: June 30, 2025
• Field of knowledge: Agronomical Sciences - Veterinary Medicine
• Principal Investigator: Maria Claudia Araripe Sucupira
• Grantee: Ana Carolina Pinheiro
• Supervisor: Luis Felipe Prada e Silva
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Medicina Veterinária e Zootecnia (FMVZ). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: University of Queensland, Brisbane (UQ), Australia
• Associated to the scholarship: 24/03776-4 - Effect of nutritional supplementation on nitrogen dosage in beef cows and their progeny in an extensive system, BP.IC

Abstract

Brazil is one of the largest producers of beef in the world. According to IBGE, in 2022, the Brazilian herd totaled over 230 million heads, mostly raised in the pasture system. The climate factors have a strong influence on these animals' nutrition, due to their impact on the feed quality, leading to potential nutritional imbalance. Without pasture management, the characteristics of the diet change significantly in the dry season, because it is when the quality and the quantity of the tropical forages decrease the most. Furthermore, during this period, the pregnant females are in the final third of gestation, which includes the months with the highest percentage of fetal development. It is known that maternal nutrition influences the embryonic calf's life considerably and, due to fetal programming, the consequences can endure the whole animal's life. Hence, the offspring phenotypic characteristics after birth, due to maternal undernutrition, have been the objective of several research. However, there are still scarce studies about the diet impact on progeny metabolism. For that matter, the quantification of nitrogen (N) isotope may be a useful technique to broaden the knowledge about this topic, toward the comprehension of the influence of fetal programming on N metabolism. This technique has been successfully applied in ruminants to study N recycling and utilization, mainly in beef cattle. Furthermore, as the sample collection is non-invasive, this procedure is faster and less stressful, and N levels are less sensitive to daily N floating. Thus, this project aim is to analyze tail hair samples obtained in the research IC project, with a grant approved by FAPESP (Process number 2024/03776-4) and, mainly, the training of the undergraduate student in the isotopic fractionation technique, at the University of Queensland, with a reference research group in this subject.