Research project title:TOWARDS THE DEVELOPMENT OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS IN PRECISION FARMING FOR THE REARING OF PIEMONTESE BOVINESSupervisor: Prof. Mario GiacobiniThe aim of the thesis is a comprehensive investigation of the possible improvements in modelling beef farm performance, in order to subsequently integrate it with information systems.Using the Piemontese breed as a case study, the assessment of beef farm performance was investigated, as well as the attributes influencing the corresponding parameters. Critical points were identified, revolving around the number of calves generated yearly. We showed that a crucial issue such as modelling the performance of a beef farm can be tackled with Machine Learning approaches. In particular, Genetic Programming is suitable, as interpretable models are produced and, through a vector-based data representation, temporal sequences can be exploited. Comparative studies with other usually enrolled prediction methods, among which Artificial Neural Networks and Random Forest, were investigated with promising results in the context of modeling the breeding performance of Piemontese cattle farms.

Subjects: Mathematics, Physics.