PSXVII-2 Technology on milk quality indicators in bulk tank milk of smallholder’s dairy farmers.

Abstract

The objective of this work was to evaluate the influence of technology transfer on milk quality indicators from bulk tank milk of smallholder’s dairy farmers in the Northeast of Sao Paulo State, Brazil. The study was carried out with 36 dairy farms assisted by extensionist. Initially, bulk tank milk sampling was performed monthly during March through June 2016 to evaluate milk quality. The producers were asked about which areas of interest to receive technical information and training. The trainings of extensionist were conducted by specialists in the five areas of greatest interest to producers. After each training, the extensionist carried out the transfer of knowledge to the producers. All trainings were conducted from June 2016 to February 2017. The second period of bulk tank milk sampling occurred from March to June 2017. All milk sampling were carried out by trained extensionist. Fat, Protein, Solids Non-Fat (SNF) and Milk Urea Nitrogen (MUN), Somatic Cell Count (SCC) and Total Bacterial Count (TBC) were analyzed in milk samplings. The SCC and TBC data were transformed to obtain the normal distribution. T-tests of paired samples were performed through the R Core Team program (2018), before and after the training. The values of fat, protein, SNF and MUN did not present significant differences before and after training, due to the great diversity of factors involved in dairy nutrition. For TBC, there was a numerical reduction from 409x10³ (before) to 346x10³ cfu/mL (after), but with no statistical difference (P=0.5883). SCC levels, which is related to mastitis, presented a significant reduction (P = 0.0581) from 568x10³ (before) to 396x10³ cells/mL, after trainings. As a conclusion of the present study, it has been shown that the technology transfer can improve milk quality, in special for SCC, due to monthly monitoring and technical visits to producers.

rural extension, monitoring, dairy farm