Nonlinear Growth Modeling in Livestock Production
Summary
Nonlinear growth modelling constitutes a cornerstone of modern livestock science, providing quantitative frameworks to characterise weight gain over time and to inform breeding, nutrition and management strategies. Classical sigmoidal functions—such as the Gompertz, Logistic, von Bertalanffy and Richards models—capture key biological phases including early rapid growth, inflection and asymptotic maturity. Recent advances extend these methods through alternative curve shapes, optimisation techniques and integration of genetic parameters. Such innovations enable more precise predictions of production milestones, optimise resource allocation and support selection for desirable traits. By modelling growth dynamics across species and production systems, researchers and practitioners can achieve global gains in efficiency, sustainability and animal welfare.
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Nonlinear Growth Modeling in Livestock Production publication trend
The graph below shows the total number of articles in nonlinear growth modeling in livestock production across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).
Technical terms
Asymptotic weight: The theoretical maximum body weight approached by an animal as it matures.
Inflection point: The age at which the growth rate transitions from acceleration to deceleration on a sigmoidal curve.
Growth rate coefficient (K): A parameter reflecting the instantaneous relative rate of weight gain in a growth model.
Nonlinear regression: A statistical method used to fit complex functions to empirical data by iteratively minimising error.
Metaheuristic algorithm: A computational strategy that combines heuristic rules to efficiently optimise model parameters in complex search spaces.
References
- Modeling the growth curve in ducks: a sinusoidal model as an alternative to classical nonlinear models. Poultry Science (2024).
- Hybrid Metaheuristic Algorithm for Optimizing Monogastric Growth Curve (Pigs and Broilers). AgriEngineering (2022).
- Fitting of Growth Curves and Estimation of Genetic Relationship between Growth Parameters of Qianhua Mutton Merino. Genes (2024).
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