LUKE

Natural Resources Institute Finland

Finland

Luke is Finland’s second largest non-profit governmental research institute, operating under the Ministry of Agriculture & Forestry. In 2019, Luke employed 1,266 personnel (full-time equivalent) at 23 research sites across the country and had an annual turnover of €125 mn. Research and development and expert services at Luke are organised into four multidisciplinary programmes, aiming to advance the bioeconomy and the sustainable use of natural resources. These programmes are based on strategic objectives: “climate smart carbon cycle”, “adaptive and resilient bioeconomy”, “profitable and responsible primary production”, and “circular bioeconomy”. Luke is also responsible for statutory and expert services, indicated via legislation or ministries. Luke has vast experience in national and international research collaboration and is currently participating in ~715 ongoing projects. Of these, 44 are Horizon 2020 projects.

Nordic Red dairy cows on pasture © Ilma Tapio

Competence and main role(s) in the project

Ilma Tapio is deputy leader of WP3, leading tasks 3.5 on dietary strategies to amend methane production or reduce heat stress negative effect in ruminants and contributing to understanding microbiome role in mastitis within task 3.3.
Terhi Iso-Touru is contributing to experiments in host response to mastitis within task 3.3.
Jarkko Niemi is leading WP5 and contributing to surveys and focus groups carried out in WP5 as well as to bio-economic modelling of microbiome applications and to WP6 activities.

Project staff

Ilma Tapio

PhD, Docent Ilma Tapio is a senior scientist at Luke. Her main interests are microbiome development in young animals, microbiome impact on digestion and energy metabolism in adult animals and microbiome role in disease. Tapio is leading Luke’s participation in MASTER (H2020), RumenPredict (ERA-GAS) and has been a member in RuminOmics (FP7) project.

Jarkko Niemi

PhD, Docent Jarkko Niemi is a Research Professor at Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke). He has 20 years of experience in socio-economic research of animal production, especially on economics of animal health and welfare, consumer and multi-actor views to animal-derived food. He has over 50 peer-reviewed and over 650 other publications. He has led socio-economic and cocreation work in EU projects such as PROHEALTH (FP7), GroupHouseNet (COST), PPILOW (H2020). He is a member of the Finnish Farm Animal Welfare Council. HoloRuminant project he is leading WP5 and contributing to surveys and focus groups carried out in WP5 as well as to bio-economic modelling of microbiome applications and to WP6 activities.

Terhi Iso- Touru

PhD Terhi Iso-Touru is a senior scientist at Luke. She is animal geneticist and her main interests are in genotype-phenotype interactions in health and disease, genomic features related to immunological responses and how the (artificial) selection has shaped the genomes of domesticated species. Iso-Touru is participating Mastitis Challenge (Academy of Finland) and BovReg (H2020) projects.

The HoloRuminant project has received funding from European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under Grant Agreement No 101000213. This publication reflects the views only of the author, and not the European Commission (EC). The EC is not liable for any use that may be made of them information contained herein.