Dairy Research in NSW
NSW DPIRD conducts applied dairy research to support the productivity, resilience and sustainability of the NSW dairy industry, generating practical outcomes for producers, processors and the broader supply chain.
Our research focus areas
Feed & pasture systems: Optimising pasture utilisation and feed management across grazing and intensive systems, including the use of remote sensing technologies for on-farm monitoring.
Farm productivity & economics: Understanding business drivers for profit and productivity including system change, and building the data frameworks producers need to make better decisions.
Milk quality & sustainability: Improving the composition and efficiency of milk production, developing animal health monitoring tools, and finding pathways to recover value from dairy food waste.
Carbon and environment: Supporting the dairy industry transition to a low carbon future and helping dairy farms be more resilient in the face of extreme climate variability.
Dairy UP Project
Dairy UP is a collaborative dairy RD&E program for NSW, focused on unlocking the potential of milk, cows and water to increase productivity and profitability, de‑risk the dairy industry, and support the development of new markets.
Project P9: Designer Milk
Dairy UP Project page available on the Dairy UP website.
Project goal: Explore innovative research-based activities to add value to milk and open up new market opportunities for NSW dairy products.
Status: Completed 2026
Summary: A four-year project exploring three interconnected opportunities across the NSW dairy supply chain: producing more concentrated milk through reduced lactose synthesis, using milk proteins as non-invasive indicators of heat stress, and converting dairy food waste into value-added products through microbial fermentation.
Headline Findings
P9a: Producing milk with less lactose
Some cows naturally produce equivalent milk solids with ~15% less lactose and water — a trait with a meaningful genetic component that could be selected for. Scaling a 1% lactose reduction across the national herd is estimated to reduce annual milk transport by ~80 million litres and save 20,000 litres of water per farm per year
P9b: Milk as an indicator of heat load
HSP70 — a stress-response protein naturally present in milk — can be reliably measured during milking as a non-invasive indicator of heat stress, reflecting cumulative heat load over the prior 33–44 hours rather than current conditions.
P9c: Adding value to dairy waste
A food-grade yeast strain was engineered to grow on cheese whey lactose and produce pro-vitamin A, establishing proof of concept for converting a high-volume manufacturing by-product into nutritionally valuable compounds.
Publications and Reports
Read the Dairy UP P9 "Designer Milk" Final report (PDF, 2138.23 KB) or visit the Dairy UP website to view all publications and reports released so far relating to the program.