10043257Enabling dairy farmers to conduct onsite, early stage monitoring of bovine mastitis – Assessing a route to market for a portable PCR workflow.ClosedGrant for R&DInnovate UKA big challenge for all dairy farms is managing the health of their livestock. An infection called mastitis causes farmers more economic losses than any other cattle disease. Mastitis is an udder infection that results in a dairy animal producing milk at lower quantity and quality. When an infection is detected, the typical approach is to treat the entire group of animals with antibiotics, including the cows that don't show symptoms. This is unhealthy for the cows that do not have the disease, and contributes to antibiotic resistance. Due to the advanced infection, the farmer loses the income expected from the lost milk. When caught early, the infection can be treated without antibiotics, and prevented from spreading. The most reliable diagnostic method is PCR technology, the same method used to identify COVID. However these diagnostic tests are done by external laboratories, and they can be very expensive and slow. Bento Lab is a portable PCR workstation that is easy to set-up. The applications of our existing customers range from decentralised malaria research to national fungi genomics surveys. We recently developed an application kit that enables bird conservationists to conduct a DNA test for bird sexing within a few hours of training. With the support of Innovate UK, we will use our existing technology to develop a package for dairy farmers to monitor their cattle, and catch infections early.