Mid-infrared spectroscopy for large-scale phenotyping of bovine colostrum gross composition and immunoglobulin concentration

Immunoglobulin G is the fundamental antibody for acquisition of passive transfer of immunity in ruminant newborns. Colostrum, in fact, must be administered as soon as possible after birth to ensure a successful transfer of IgG from the dam to the calf. Assessment of colostrum Ig concentration and gross composition via gold standards is expensive, time consuming, and hardly implementable for large-scale investigations. Therefore, in the present study we evaluated the predictive ability of mid-infrared spectroscopy (MIRS) as an indirect determination method. A total of 714 colostrum samples collected within 6 h from parturition from Italian Holstein cows, 30% primiparous and 70% pluriparous, were scanned using a benchtop spectrometer after dilution in pure water. The prediction models were developed by correlating spectral information with the reference measurements: IgG concentration (93.54 ± 33.87 g/L), total Ig concentrations (102.82 ± 35.04 g/L), and content of protein (14.71 ± 3.51%), fat (4.61 ± 3.04%), and lactose (2.36 ± 0.51 mg/100 mg). We found a good to excellent performance in prediction of colostrum IgG concentration and traditional composition traits in cross-validation (R2CV ≥ 0.92) and a promising and good predictive ability in external validation with R2V equal to 0.84, 0.89, and 0.74 for IgG, protein, and fat, respectively. In the case of IgG and protein content, for example, the coefficient of determination in external validation was greater than 0.84. The other Ig fractions, A and M, presented insufficient prediction accuracy likely due to their extremely low concentration compared with IgG (4.56 and 5.06 g/L vs. 93.54 g/L). The discriminant ability of MIRS-predicted IgG and protein content was outstanding when trying to classify samples according to the quality level (i.e., low vs. high concentration of IgG). In particular, the cut-off that better discriminate low- from high-quality colostrum was 75.40 g/L in the case of the MIRS-predicted IgG and 13.32% for the MIRS-predicted protein content. Therefore, MIRS is proposed as a rapid and cheap tool for large-scale punctual IgG, protein, and lactose quantification and for the screening of low-quality samples. From a practical perspective, there is the possibility to install colostrum models in the MIRS benchtop machineries already present in laboratories in charge of official milk testing. Colostrum phenotypes collected on an individual basis will be useful to breeders for the definition of specific selection strategies and to farmers for management scopes. Finally, our findings may be relevant for other stakeholders, given the fact that colostrum is an emerging ingredient for the animal and human food and pharmaceutical industry.