Milk microbiota of Holstein Friesian cattle reared in Lahore: Association with mastitis

The dairy industry is reshaping itself and becoming commercialized in Pakistan due to the increased demand for milk to overcome the shortage. Exotic breeds such as Holstein Friesian, a high milk producing breed have started being reared more on farms in Pakistan. Along with other issues, mastitis does affects the milk production of this breed. The objective of this study was to evaluate the milk composition in terms of bacterial communities in Holstein Friesian reared in Punjab, Pakistan and alteration in microbial composition with healthy and mastitic udder. Milk samples (n = 36) from farms rearing Holstein Friesian were collected. Among these samples, 05 samples from each three groups, HHF(healthy), CHF (clinical mastitis) and SHF (subclinical mastitis), based on their udder health condition, were processed using the 16 S r=RNA gene based technique. Diversity assessment as carried out by alpha diversity indices showed that milk samples from the udder infected with clinical mastitis were the least diverse and those from the healthy udder were more diverse. Beta diversity across samples showed a scattered pattern suggesting overlap amongst bacterial communities across different groups samples as depicted by PCA plots of beta diversity indices. The taxonomic profile revealed that Proteobacteria Firmicutes, Bacteroidota and Actinobacteriota were the major phyla detected across all groups. Proteobacteria dominated the HHF and SHF group while abundance of Firmicutes was higher in CHF group. Differences at other levels including order, genus and species were also recorded. The overall picture concludes that diverse microbiota is associated with different udder health conditions.