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Professor Chris Reynolds

Professor Chris Reynold portrait
  • Deputy Head, School of Agriculture, Policy and Development
  • Director of the Centre for Dairy Research  (CEDAR)
  • Module Convenor for: Dairy Production; Animal Production
  • Undergraduate and postgraduate dissertation supervisor
  • Academic Tutor to undergraduate students
 

Areas of interest

Research has become increasingly wholistic and systems-based, addressing some of the major challenges for animal agriculture, including the large amount of methane produced by rumen microbes, the relatively low efficiency of dietary nitrogen utilization in ruminants, and the large contribution of nitrogen in ruminant livestock excreta to global nitrous oxide, ammonia, and nitrate emission inventories.  This research has included numerous long-term, multi-site, collaborative projects on reducing greenhouse gas emissions from animal agriculture and improving the efficiency of N utilization in ruminant production systems, with a focus on dietary and other management strategies for reducing methane emissions and improving the efficiency of N utilization in dairy production systems.  Chris has supervised numerous PhD students to completion across varied animal science areas.

Teaching

Teaching focus is on dairy, beef and sheep production systems from a UK and global context.  Specific areas for classroom undergraduate teaching include feeding, digestion and nutrition, genetics and breeding, dairy cow transition, and environmental impacts of animal agriculture.  Field trips to local farms focus on using observations and records to evaluate management practice and improve health, welfare and sustainability.

Research projects

  • Diverse Forages Project: A multi-disciplinary (animal, plant, and soil science, agronomy, environmental and economic modelling) research on the use of legumes and multi-species swards for ruminant production systems to reduce reliance on N fertilizer and improve resilience to climate change, soil health and fertility, animal nutrition and health, and biodiversity (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZMVbd8-wuUg4HJdQx2IPaQ).

  • Dairy Protein Efficiency:How Low Can We Go?:A multi-site, long-term project on ‘increasing the efficiency of protein utilization in dairy production systems’ that included a trial examining the effects of incremental reductions in dietary protein supply over multiple lactations (https://www.reading.ac.uk/apd/facilities/cedar).

  • Recent research collaborations have also included:
    • The use of novel analytical approaches and remote sensing for monitoring forage biomass and composition in situ (e.g. ‘Monitoring and prediction of pasture quality and productivity from satellites’; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2018.09.028),
    • Diet quality, and animal health and behaviour using satellite or handheld spectral data, image analysis, and wearable devices (e.g. ‘Hand held technologies for assessment of nutrient digestibility’; https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-74511-0),
    • The use of high-throughput mass spectrometry analysis of milk and other biofluids for early detection of mastitis and other diseases (e.g. ‘Developing liquid AP-MALDI MS as a rapid large-scale classification method for determining farm animal health’; https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-82846-5).

Background

Chris previously held appointments as an Associate Professor at the Ohio State University, as a Lecturer and Senior Research Fellow at the University of Reading, and as a Research Animal Scientist in the Ruminant Nutrition Laboratory of the USDA-ARS in Beltsville, MD, USA.

Academic qualifications

  • 1982 – 1984: PhD in Animal Science, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
  • 1979 – 1981: MS in Animal Science, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
  • 1977 – 1979: BS in Animal Science (Magna Cum Laude), The University of Tennessee at Martin, Martin.
  • 1975 – 1977: AA Degree from Martin College, Pulaski, TN.

Awards and honours

  • 2022 American Dairy Science Association “AFIA Dairy Nutrition Research Award”
  • 2003 American Society of Animal Science “AFIA Ruminant Nutrition Research Award”
  • 2000 British Society of Animal Science “Sir John Hammond Prize” for Outstanding Research
  • 1994 American Dairy Science Association "Young Scientist Award" for Outstanding Research

Professional bodies/affiliations

  • Honorary Professor of Ruminant Sciences at SRUC, Scotland’s Rural College (since 2018)
  • Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology (FRSB)

     Member of:

Publications

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