Thermal comfort of Nelore (Bos indicus) and Canchim (Bos taurus x Bos indicus) bulls kept in an integrated crop-livestock-forestry system in a tropical climate
Graphical abstract
Introduction
Several countries have been suffering from the effects of climate change, which has led to direct losses in the agri-food sector (Bayssa et al., 2021). According to the IPCC (2021), the temperature of Earth's surface could increase by 2.1 to 3.5 °C by the year 2100 in an intermediate scenario of greenhouse gas emission. It is estimated that there will be an increase in the frequency, intensity, and duration of extreme bioclimate events (Howden et al., 2008). Among livestock species, beef cattle are one of the most susceptible to suffer from water and food stress due to recent climate change (Ali et al., 2020).
Climate change presents challenges for livestock productivity and animal health. Heat stress causes deleterious effects in homeostasis, leading to nutritional and metabolic disorders that reduce growth rate, weight gain, and meat quality (Henry et al., 2012). Heat loads are capable of displacing cattle from their thermal comfort zone, leading to heat stress, which compromises reproduction and reduces fertility (Lees et al., 2019), decreasing the efficiency of production systems. In addition, extreme environmental events can determine adverse effects on the immunological condition of cattle, making them more susceptible to diseases and not able to live in an expected condition of welfare (Caminade et al., 2019).
Considering this, studies to develop strategies to mitigate the heat stress of pasture-based herds have been gaining importance, especially in tropical (Domiciano et al., 2016; Giro et al., 2019a; Santos et al., 2021) and subtropical regions (Davison et al., 2016; Deniz et al., 2021). In this regard, the implementation of integrated production systems, such as the crop-livestock-forestry (ICLF) (Telles et al., 2021), has been changing paradigms of pasture cattle production with the development of more sustainable, specialized, and technified systems (Garrett et al., 2017; Kruchelski et al., 2023). The adoption of the ICLF system presents benefits like the rationalization and intensification of land use, besides the diversification of productive components, providing the producer with the option of including trees, grains, and forage in the system (Figueiredo et al., 2017). Furthermore, the ICLF system has a potential of contributing to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, especially carbon dioxide and methane (Sá et al., 2017).
ICLF can benefit animals from the increased quality of forage (Assmann et al., 2014) if grasses adapted to shaded conditions are used (Abraham et al., 2014). The introduction of trees into the system may also promote positive microclimate changes by providing natural shading, a milder ambient temperature, and better indices of thermal comfort (Oliveira et al., 2018), which gives the animals fewer hours of exposure to heat stress (Pezzopane et al., 2019). However, despite the importance and growing interest in the adoption of integrated systems, and some previous reports about possible ICLF's benefits to thermal comfort of water buffaloes (Garcia et al., 2011; Joele et al., 2017), dairy heifers (Silva et al., 2008) and beef cows (Lemes et al., 2021), there are gaps in the scientific literature regarding the positive effects on beef bulls.
One of the intriguing points is how the homeothermy maintenance mechanisms in zebu and composite breeds respond when animals are kept in the ICLF system. In this context, the objective of the study was to evaluate the production systems in a non-shaded pastures and in a crop-livestock-forestry pastures on microclimatic conditions and their effects on the thermoregulatory and endocrine responses of Nelore and Canchim bulls during different seasons in a tropical environment.
Section snippets
Location and period
The experiment was conducted at the Embrapa-Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation in São Carlos, Brazil (21°57′42″ S, 47°50′28″ W, 854 a.m.s.l.). The local climatic type is Cwa, altitude tropical, according to the Köppen-Geiger classification (Kottek et al., 2006) with four distinct seasons: winter, spring, summer, and autumn. Throughout the year, the daily minimal air temperature varies from 6.6 to 23.8 °C, the average of maximum air temperature varies from 29.0 to 34.6 °C with peaks up
Biometeorological variables and thermal comfort indexes
The presence of trees reduced the radiant heat load on pastures from 656 to 551 W/m2 (Table 1) and significantly decreased the mean air temperature by 0.6 °C and the black globe temperature by 3.7 °C. In consequence, the BGHI was 3.8 points higher in non-shaded areas, where wind speed was higher than 0.6 m/s. Relative humidity did not differ between treatments.
Body surface temperature
MibT, MebT, and TTr were higher in NS bulls in Autumn and Winter, with no difference between treatments in the other stations (Fig. 5).
Discussion
One of the purposes of inserting a tree component in a cattle production system is to reduce the exposure of the animals to solar radiation and high temperatures of the environment, providing a microclimate that favors thermal comfort (Castro-Pérez et al., 2020). This effect was efficiently achieved, with the observation of a change in the set of biometeorological variables that led to a milder environmental condition in the ICLF system. This occurred regardless of 2018 being one of the four
Conclusions
The integrated crop-livestock-forestry system was effective in mitigating the microclimate of the pastures, since the provided natural shade reduced the negative effects of high air temperature and direct solar radiation on the animals in a tropical environment. By providing a better thermal comfort condition to the bulls, the ICLF system positively impacted the physiological characteristics related to the thermodynamic balance of the animals and the maintenance of their homeothermy. In regard
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Narian Romanello: Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, Data curation, Writing – original draft. Andréa do Nascimento Barreto: Methodology, Investigation. Marco Antonio Paula de Sousa: Investigation. Júlio Cesar de Carvalho Balieiro: Data curation, Formal analysis. Felipe Zandonadi Brandão: Methodology, Investigation. Felipe Tonato: Methodology, Investigation. Alberto Carlos de Campos Bernardi: Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, Funding acquisition. José Ricardo Macedo
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Alexandre Rossetto Garcia reports financial support was provided by National Council for Scientific and Technological Development. Julio Cesar de Carvalho Balieiro reports financial support was provided by National Council for Scientific and Technological Development. Alexandre Rossetto Garcia reports financial support was
Acknowledgments
The authors thank the Embrapa (Precision Agriculture Network, grant# 11.14.09.001.03.03), Instituto Brasileiro de Desenvolvimento e Sustentabilidade (Sustainable Rural Project-Cerrado), IABS, ILPF Network, and FAPESP for the financial support (Process 2015/26627-5, Process 2019/04528-6). This study was also financed by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - Brasil (CAPES) - Finance Code 001. ARG, JCCB, FZB, ACCB and JRMP are CNPq - National Council for Scientific and
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