SAES-422 Multistate Research Activity Accomplishments Report
Sections
Status: Approved
Basic Information
- Project No. and Title: NRSP9 : National Animal Nutrition Program
- Period Covered: 10/01/2023 to 09/30/2024
- Date of Report: 02/21/2025
- Annual Meeting Dates: 09/21/2024 to 09/24/2024
Participants
Members of the Coordinating, Modeling, Feed Composition, and Climate-Smart Feed Management Committees who attended meetings throughout the year can be found on the National Animal Nutrition Program (NANP) website at https://animalnutrition.org/committees.
NANP Coordinating Committee (CC), Feed Composition Committee (FCC) and Modeling Committee (MC) conducted regular meetings throughout the year to plan activities that contribute to NRSP9 goals. The Climate-Smart Feed Management Committee was newly formed during the reporting period and began regular meetings in July. Committee chairs and subcommittees met as needed throughout the year and reported to their respective committee chairs. An in-person meeting of the CC was held to plan for the coming year and make significant progress toward the planned renewal proposal. Discussions in the 2023-24 year focused on continued improvements to databases and increasing utility, alignment with National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) nutrient requirement report updates, implementation of the new partnership with NRCS, and ideas for sustainability of the project into the future including alternative funding models. Minutes for all CC meetings are included in the attachment.
Accomplishments
Progress toward business plan: The CC explored ways to use the non-profit status and new functionality of the website to generate revenue. The committee also investigated creation of an external advisory board to help guide the project in aligning with industry needs and identify potential targets for sponsorships and donations.
Integration of NANP resources with upcoming NASEM Poultry Nutrient Requirements revision: A major role of NANP is to support updates to the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) animal nutrient requirement reports by providing expertise to committees and developing tools that add value to the reports and ensure their utility between revisions. The forthcoming poultry nutrient requirements revision (last updated 30 years ago) will contain information on how to access feed composition data via the NANP website rather than the static feed composition tables included in all previous NASEM reports. Rather than provide a snapshot in time, the NANP databases will provide a dynamically updated resource to the research community. NANP is also capturing and preserving accompanying animal performance data, models and related software code in support of the NASEM updates. We expect the integration of NANP resources in the poultry report will serve as a model for future species nutrient utilization updates, including the swine revision currently underway.
NANP website and database enhancements: The Feed Composition database was redesigned in both style and function. A global nutrition glossary was integrated with the database to ensure consistent use of terminology in the descriptions of feed components. The newly-styled database was launched in July for beta testing and feedback from users was collected. The previously curated beef and dairy data from the NASEM reports were incorporated into the database, providing improved functionality to this resource and adding value to the nutrient utilization reports. The FCC continued working on integration of novel datasets and related tools, such as modular feed budgets. The MC activities focused on updating the animal nutrition and metabolism database. An end user licensing agreement for non-commercial use of downloads from the NANP site was finalized and released.
Initiated the Climate-Smart Feed Management Committee: Nominations were sought for the newly-formed Climate-Smart Feed Management Committee of the NANP. This committee was created as a result of a new partnership with NRCS to help improve livestock feeding management by engaging stakeholders, identifying priorities, providing training, and disseminating information.
Modeling and Data Workshops: A workshop titled “Techniques for Design to Data Analysis: A Case Study Using GreenFeed “ was co-hosted by NANP and C-Lock was held at the annual American Dairy Science Association meeting in West Palm Beach, FL on June 16, 2024. The workshop provided hands-on opportunities for approximately 50 participants. A one-day modeling workshop titled “Mathematical Modeling and Data Predictive Analytics in Animal Nutrition“ was hosted by NANP at the ASAS-CCAS-WSASAS meeting in Calgary, Canada. Approximately 40 attendees learned about potential application of AI and deep learning in animal nutrition modeling and received hands-on training in applying techniques.
See NANP website at https://animalnutrition.org/ for access to outputs from NRSP-9.
Impacts
- NANP is improving the efficiency and speed of updates to the NASEM nutrient requirement reports by negating the need for each individual committee to collect data, code, and models from scratch. The NASEM reports underpin all nutrition, and nutrition-dependent research in the US.
- The data, models and other resources provided by NANP provide a critical foundation for investigations of the connection between nutrition and animal production and sustainability and help ensure scientifically source, contemporary, and consistent information is available for researchers. Significance to the research community is demonstrated in part by the website usage statistics which indicate 1,400+ pageviews per week from users across the U.S. and 165 other countries. From August 2023 to August 2024, the NRSP-9 website welcomed 19,091 unique users. As of the end of the current reporting period, 2,880 users have registered to access resources developed and made available through the NANP website. Social media continues to increase awareness of NANP resources. Social media audience across all platforms increased by nearly 50% over 2023 numbers.
Publications
Four peer-reviewed publications resulting from the 2022 ASAS-NANP Symposium were published.
- Brennan, J., H. M. Menendez, III, K. Ehlert, and L. O. Tedeschi. 2023. ASAS-NANP symposium: mathematical modeling in animal nutrition—Making sense of big data and machine learning: how open-source code can advance training of animal scientists. J. Anim. Sci. 101:skad317. doi: 10.1093/jas/skad317
- Kaniyamattam, K., and L. O. Tedeschi. 2023. ASAS-NANP symposium: mathematical modeling in animal nutrition: Agent-based modeling for livestock systems: the mechanics of development and application. J. Anim. Sci. 101:skad321. doi: 10.1093/jas/skad321
- Muñoz-Tamayo, R., and L. O. Tedeschi. 2023. ASAS-NANP symposium: Mathematical modeling in animal nutrition: the power of identifiability analysis for dynamic modeling in animal science - a practitioner approach. J. Anim. Sci. 101:skad320. doi: 10.1093/jas/skad320
- Tedeschi, L. O., H. M. Menendez, III, and A. Remus. 2023. ASAS-NANP SYMPOSIUM: Mathematical modeling in animal nutrition: Training the future generation in data and predictive analytics for sustainable development. A summary of the 2021 and 2022 symposia. J. Anim. Sci. 101:skad318. doi: 10.1093/jas/skad318
Two publications resulting from the 2023 NANP Summit were published by Scientia. These communicate key concepts related to the NANP’s mission highlighted by Summit presenters. These can be used broadly with policy makers, government officials and other audiences.