The aquaculture working group is responsible for all husbandry facilities in connection with aquaculture research and sees itself as an infrastructural unit of laboratory animal husbandry at the department that can be used by all groups in the department. Also, we carry out independent research projects and make research contributions in the areas of breeding, reproduction, husbandry technology and product quality. We focus on various fish species such as trout, tilapia and catfish, but also on the zebrafish as a model organism.

Aquaculture (Prof. Dr. Jens Tetens)

Biotechnology and reproduction of farm animals (Prof. Dr. Michael Hölker)

The Functional Breeding department conducts research in various areas around the main topic Breeding improvement of functional traits with the aim of decoding the genetic and molecular basis of these traits. Methods from genomics and transcriptomics are primarily used, but also proteomics and metabolomics. Current projects deal with feather pecking and amyloid arthropathy in chickens, as well as metabolic stability in dairy cows, but also with characteristics of adaptation and resource efficiency in fish.

Functional Breeding (Prof. Dr. Jens Tetens)

Genomics, molecular genetics and biology are fundamental and by now integral parts of basic and applied research in veterinary medicine and animal production. The elucidation of genotype and phenotype interactions with special emphasis on the effects and interplay of genes and their variants as well as the structural and functional conditions of the genome and chromosomes, are basic prerequisitesfor understanding biological, biochemical and physiological processes on cellular and organismic level of an animal.

Molecular Biology of Livestock and molecular Diagnostics (Prof. Dr. Bertram Brenig)

Animal Nutrition Physiology is focused on physiological well-founded animal nutrition and its impacts on performance, animal welfare, animal health, product quality and environment.

Animal Nutrition Physiology (Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Siegert)

The production of animal products involves various trade-offs between societal expectations, legal requirements, physiological fundamentals and resource consumption. The research and teaching activities of the division therefore aim at a comprehensive understanding of endogenous and exogenous influences on the quality of animal products as well as on their consumer perception. Therefore, the division works at the interface of scientific methods for the objective characterisation of product properties and sensory methods for measuring product perception or consumer acceptance.

Quality of Animal Products (Prof. Dr. Daniel Mörlein)

Research topics in the division of Livestock Production Systems focus on livestock farming and process engineering. Empirical work on research and commercial farms as well as theoretical modelling are both significant characteristics of research topics. Focus is put on issues concerning precision livestock farming, digitalization, animal health and animal welfare combined with the development of early warning systems and automatic video/image analysis e.g. based on machine learning methods.

Livestock Production Systems (Commissary Management: Prof. Dr. Armin Schmitt)

The section Animal Husbandry in the Tropics and Subtropics is jointly implemented by the agricultural faculties of the University of Kassel and the University of Göttingen. With our research and teaching, we aim at contributing to an optimized use of resources in livestock-based land use systems of the Tropics and Subtropics. In particular, we study the optimal integration of livestock and crop husbandry for efficient utilization of nutrients, as well as sustainable rangeland and herd management in communal grazing systems. We also work on fine-tuning of non-invasive field methods to quantify livestock-environment interactions, in particular feed intake and nutrient relocation of farm animals and enteric methane emissions of ruminants. Geographically, our research concentrates on West-Africa and Madagascar, the Middle East, India and Central Asia.

Animal Husbandry in the Tropics and Subtropics (Prof. Dr. Eva Schlecht)

The task of animal breeding is to develop livestock populations in such a way that they can be used to produce food in an efficient and animal-friendly manner under foreseeable conditions. New methodological approaches allow a better insight into the genetic basis of important trait complexes and make it possible to resolve trade-offs between breeding progress, animal health and preservation of genetic diversity. A special focus of the animal breeding and genetics group is the design of breeding programs, where we use innovative methodological approaches and in-house developed software to plan and optimize sustainable and future-oriented breeding programs. Further, the group manages the global breeding program of the Göttingen minipig©.

Animal Breeding and Genetics (Commissary Management: Prof. Dr. Jens Tetens)

The extensive forestomach system and the rich microbial population of ruminants gives the opportunity to comprehensively include fibrous feeds like forages or by-products in their diets. Related to this, the scientific focus of the research group includes different aspects of ruminal fermentation (e.g. microbial growth and methane development) and of fiber-adequate feeding of cattle, goats and other ruminants.

Ruminant Nutrition (Prof. Dr. Jürgen Hummel)

The division of breeding informatics is dealing with the application and adaptation of algorithms to increase the efficiency in molecular plant and animal breeding. The research topics include

• association between genotype and phenotype
• regulatory SNPs
• automatic monitoring of animal behavior
• handling of big data sets

Breeding Informatics (Prof. Dr. Armin Schmitt)