Understanding antimicrobial resistance in Yak milk microbiomes

June 2025: A team of researchers from the University of Edinburgh travelled to Nepal to join colleagues from Research Institute for Bioscience & Biotechnology (RIBB) on an extensive data collection trek through the Himalayas as part of a project aiming to understand antimicrobial resistance in Yak milk.

Jess' group going up Everest — L-R: Ravi Bhandari, Prajwal Rajbhandari, Rojlina Manandhar, Durga Karki, Neil Mabbott, Jess Mitchell, Laura Glendinning, Sarala Nepal. Photo credit: Durga Karki

The project is funded by the University of Edinburgh International Partnership award (Nov 2024 – July 2025).

The aims of the project are to explore Yak husbandry practices through interviews and ethnographies with Yak farmers/owners and explore antimicrobial use and other potential drivers of antimicrobial resistance in Yak farming.

The team, consisting of Dr Jess Mitchell, Dr Laura Glendinning, Prof Neil Mabbot from Edinburgh and Prajwal Rajbhandari, Rojlina (Rose) Manandhar and Durga Karki from RIBB, spent 10 days treking through the Himalayas and ascended to almost 4000m on foot.

The qualitative data collection during this project revealed so much about the Yak’s cultural significant in this area. Although not the focus of our project we now recognise there are many challenges associated with the management of pure Yak and better understand the reasons for decreasing Yak herds and population sizes in general. This will help us refine our future study plans to ensure we are addressing issues of major concern to this community as well as wider research interests.

Engaging local farmers

Working with the Yak Genetic Resource Centre in Syangboche, researchers engaged local Yak farmers in in-depth interviews to explore their husbandry practices and took milk samples from the government-managed Yak herd. On their descent, they worked with the Khumbu Pasanglhamu Rural Municipality office to take milk samples from cow and local cow-yak hybrids known as Chauri.

In addition, they also conducted rapid ethnographic observations. This immersive data collection approach allows field team members to observe their study species, habitat and participants and record how engagement with them has shaped the project, their understanding of the study system and so on.

Ethnographic observations found Yak, cow and hybrids to be in very good condition with clearly robust animal husbandry practices in place and a close relationship between farmers/owners and animals.

Idea for this project came from trekking to Langtang Region in January 2024. From idea to formation of team for writing grant to working together around Animal health was a nice experience. A trek to Khumbu region for research sampling with local small-holder yak farmers will always be in memory in years to come.

Projected impacts

Although the project is still in the data gathering stage, there are a number of projected impacts of the project.

By collecting this data, researchers are able to conduct a comparison of the bacterial microbiomes in the milk of bovine species reared at high altitude in Nepal. In addition, they will be able to provide preliminary insight into antimicrobial resistance (AMR) genes present in the milk of Nepal’s high altitude bovine species.

Finally, researchers aim to provide a list of recommendations to stakeholders to help reduce the potential spread of AMR genes to and within Nepal’s high altitude bovine species.