Suchergebnisse

To evaluate the Weitzman approach for assessing alternative conservation strategies for breed ( population ) diversity, we used genetic distance measures between 49 African cattle breeds divided into two groups of 26 taurine ( Bos taurus ) and sanga ( Bos taurus×Bos indicus ) breeds and 23 zebu ( Bos indicus ) and zenga ( sanga ×Bos indicus ) breeds. The derived maximum-likelihood trees clearly displayed the geographic distribution and the zebu-taurine admixture of the breeds. We developed a novel scheme to estimate the extinction probability for each breed which considered total population size, change of population size over the last 10 years, distribution of the breed, risk of indiscriminate crossing, organization among farmers, establishment of conservation schemes, political situation of the countries, special traits, sociocultural importance, and reliability of information. This scheme yielded reasonable estimates of extinction probabilities for the analyzed breeds, which were significantly influenced by the population size and its recent change, distribution of the breed, organization among farmers, establishment of conservation schemes, and reliability of information. The average extinction probability over all breeds and for each breed group was around 48%. Diversity in the zebu-zenga group was only half the diversity in the taurine-sanga group, mainly because of the lower number of breeds and their genetic origin. For both groups, the expected diversity after 20–50 years was about half the current diversity, and the coefficient of variation was about 20%. Our results suggest that the optimum conservation strategy is to give priority to those breeds with the highest marginal diversity, rather than to the most endangered breeds; thus, Madagascar Zebu and Muturu should be given conservation priority in their respective groups. Our study demonstrates that efficient conservation of genetic diversity with limited funds has to take genetic and nongenetic factors into account. Nongenetic factors are accounted for within our scheme to derive extinction probabilities. Within-breed and within-population diversity are not accounted for. Extending Weitzman's basic approach accordingly could yield an effective methodology for determining conservation strategies under highly varying circumstances and for many species, including wild organisms.

Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, United Kingdom ; Department for International Development, United Kingdom ; Scottish Government ; Peer Review

Farm animals play a crucial part in the livelihood systems and well-being of the poor in the developing world, and thereby in helping to meet the Millennium Development Goals. In addition to food, clothing and other goods, livestock are important for income generation, wealth accumulation, traction and nutrient cycling. Of particular significance is the contribution they make to the livelihoods and wellbeing of smallholders in marginal environments, especially women and children. The diversity of cattle, sheep, goat, pig, poultry and breeds of other farm animal species represents an irreplaceable source of traits for livestock development in response to changing environmental and human needs. However, these genetic resources are being eroded as a result of changing agricultural practices and economic, environmental and other factors. Of particular concern are the high rates of loss of indigenous breeds in developing countries, which, coupled with inadequate programmes for the use and management of the genetic resources, is negatively impacting on livelihood options for the poor. The need to reduce the degradation of farm animal genetic resources and establish programmes for their conservation and sustainable use is well recognized. It is embodied in the objectives of the Convention on Biological Diversity and in the development of the Global Strategy for the Management of Farm Animal Genetic Resources, led by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). Noting the need for a greater understanding of the status of farm animal genetic resources and the measures necessary for their conservation and sustainable use worldwide, in 1999 the FAO Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture initiated a country-driven process to develop the first Report on the State of the World's Animal Genetic Resources. The Report will be finalized at the First International Technical Conference on Animal Genetic Resources in September 2007, hosted by the Government of Switzerland. With the aim of assisting the international community in developing a global framework for the conservation of farm animal genetic resources and identifying priorities for action, the System-wide Genetic Resources Programme (SGRP) of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), in association with FAO, AGROPOLIS, France, and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ) GmbH, Germany, convened an international workshop on Options and Strategies for the Conservation of Farm Animal Genetic Resources in November 2005, hosted by AGROPOLIS in Montpellier, France. The workshop brought together 63 experts from 28 countries and from the CGIAR centres, FAO, the French scientific community, including the Institut national de la recherche agronomique (INRA) and the Centre de coopération internationale en recherche agronomique pour le développement (CIRAD), and GTZ. The workshop findings are presented in this report.

Sixty-three experts from 28 countries and eight international organizations met for four days in Montpellier, France, in November 2005 to review the options and strategies for the conservation of farm animal genetic resources (FAnGR) and to identify priorities for action. The workshop focused primarily on the technical needs and opportunities and placed less emphasis on policy and institutional issues, although findings on such issues did arise naturally from many of the conclusions drawn. The workshop resulted in 11 major findings and 13 priorities for action. The workshop also identified four broad areas where information and knowledge were lacking. The findings and priorities for action are listed here in the executive summary and each is explained in more detail in the body of this report. They are presented in the order developed by the workshop. Participants did not attempt to rank the findings and actions.

University of Nottingham ; Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, United Kingdom ; Department for International Development, United Kingdom ; Scottish Government ; Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation ; King Saud University ; King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology ; Peer Review

The Infectious Diseases of East African Livestock (IDEAL) project was a longitudinal cohort study of calf health which was conducted in Western Kenya between 2007–2010. A total of 548 East African shorthorn zebu calves were recruited at birth and followed at least every 5 weeks during the first year of life. Comprehensive clinical and epidemiological data, blood and tissue samples were collected at every visit. These samples were screened for over 100 different pathogens or infectious exposures, using a range of diagnostic methods. This manuscript describes this comprehensive dataset and bio-repository, and how to access it through a single online site (http://data.ctlgh.org/ideal/). This provides extensive filtering and searching capabilities. These data are useful to illustrate outcomes of multiple infections on health, investigate patterns of morbidity and mortality due to parasite infections, and to study genotypic determinants of immunity and disease. ; Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation ; United Kingdom government ; Wellcome Trust ; Peer Review

The Infectious Diseases of East African Livestock (IDEAL) project was a longitudinal cohort study of calf health which was conducted in Western Kenya between 2007–2010. A total of 548 East African shorthorn zebu calves were recruited at birth and followed at least every 5 weeks during the first year of life. Comprehensive clinical and epidemiological data, blood and tissue samples were collected at every visit. These samples were screened for over 100 different pathogens or infectious exposures, using a range of diagnostic methods. This manuscript describes this comprehensive dataset and bio-repository, and how to access it through a single online site (http://data.ctlgh.org/ideal/). This provides extensive filtering and searching capabilities. These data are useful to illustrate outcomes of multiple infections on health, investigate patterns of morbidity and mortality due to parasite infections, and to study genotypic determinants of immunity and disease. ; The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the UK aid from the UK Government's Department for International Development. ; http://www.nature.com/sdata ; am2021 ; Veterinary Tropical Diseases

[Background]: Pigs were domesticated independently in Eastern and Western Eurasia early during the agricultural revolution, and have since been transported and traded across the globe. Here, we present a worldwide survey on 60K genome-wide single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) data for 2093 pigs, including 1839 domestic pigs representing 122 local and commercial breeds, 215 wild boars, and 39 out-group suids, from Asia, Europe, America, Oceania and Africa. The aim of this study was to infer global patterns in pig domestication and diversity related to demography, migration, and selection. ; [Results]: A deep phylogeographic division reflects the dichotomy between early domestication centers. In the core Eastern and Western domestication regions, Chinese pigs show differentiation between breeds due to geographic isolation, whereas this is less pronounced in European pigs. The inferred European origin of pigs in the Americas, Africa, and Australia reflects European expansion during the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries. Human-mediated introgression, which is due, in particular, to importing Chinese pigs into the UK during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, played an important role in the formation of modern pig breeds. Inbreeding levels vary markedly between populations, from almost no runs of homozygosity (ROH) in a number of Asian wild boar populations, to up to 20% of the genome covered by ROH in a number of Southern European breeds. Commercial populations show moderate ROH statistics. For domesticated pigs and wild boars in Asia and Europe, we identified highly differentiated loci that include candidate genes related to muscle and body development, central nervous system, reproduction, and energy balance, which are putatively under artificial selection. ; [Conclusions]: Key events related to domestication, dispersal, and mixing of pigs from different regions are reflected in the 60K SNP data, including the globalization that has recently become full circle since Chinese pig breeders in the past decades started selecting Western breeds to improve local Chinese pigs. Furthermore, signatures of ongoing and past selection, acting at different times and on different genetic backgrounds, enhance our insight in the mechanism of domestication and selection. The global diversity statistics presented here highlight concerns for maintaining agrodiversity, but also provide a necessary framework for directing genetic conservation. ; This study is supported by National Production Technology System for the Pig Industry in China (nycytx-008) and Outstanding Talents and Innovation Team of Agricultural Science (2011-81) to LH, AGL2010-14822 and AGL2013-41834-R (Ministry of Economy and Science, Spain) to MPE. LI received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 656697. HJM received funding from the IMAGE project (Horizon 2020, No. 677353). ; Peer reviewed

International audience ; Livestock conservation practice is changing rapidly in light of policy developments, climate change and diversifying market demands. The last decade has seen a step change in technology and analytical approaches available to define, manage and conserve Farm Animal Genomic Resources (FAnGR). However, these rapid changes pose challenges for FAnGR conservation in terms of technological continuity, analytical capacity and integrative methodologies needed to fully exploit new, multidimensional data. The final conference of the ESF Genomic Resources program aimed to address these interdisciplinary problems in an attempt to contribute to the agenda for research and policy development directions during the coming decade. By 2020, according to the Convention on Biodiversity's Aichi Target 13, signatories should ensure that the genetic diversity of .farmed and domesticated animals and of wild relatives .is maintained, and strategies have been developed and implemented for minimizing genetic erosion and safeguarding their genetic diversity." However, the real extent of genetic erosion is very difficult to measure using current data Therefore, this challenging target demands better coverage, understanding and utilization of genomic and environmental data, the development of optimized ways to integrate these data with social and other sciences and policy analysis to enable more flexible, evidence based models to underpin FAnGR conservation. At the conference, we attempted to identify the most important problems for effective livestock genomic resource conservation during the next decade. Twenty priority questions were identified that could be broadly categorized into challenges related to methodology, analytical approaches, data management and conservation. It should be acknowledged here that while the focus of our meeting was predominantly around genetics, genomics and animal science, many of the practical challenges facing conservation of genomic resources are societal in origin and are predicated on the value (e.g., socio-economic and cultural) of these resources to farmers, rural communities and society as a whole. The overall conclusion is that despite the fact that the livestock sector has been relatively well-organized in the application of genetic methodologies to date, there is still a large gap between the current state-of-the-art in the use of tools to characterize genomic resources and its application to many non-commercial and local breeds, hampering the consistent utilization of genetic and genomic data as indicators of genetic erosion and diversity. The livestock genomic sector therefore needs to make a concerted effort in the coming decade to enable to the democratization of the powerful tools that are now at its disposal, and to ensure that they are applied in the context of breed conservation as well as development.

Livestock conservation practice is changing rapidly in light of policy developments, climate change and diversifying market demands. The last decade has seen a step change in technology and analytical approaches available to define, manage and conserve Farm Animal Genomic Resources (FAnGR). However, these rapid changes pose challenges for FAnGR conservation in terms of technological continuity, analytical capacity and integrative methodologies needed to fully exploit new, multidimensional data. The final conference of the ESF Genomic Resources program aimed to address these interdisciplinary problems in an attempt to contribute to the agenda for research and policy development directions during the coming decade. By 2020, according to the Convention on Biodiversity's Aichi Target 13, signatories should ensure that the genetic diversity of .farmed and domesticated animals and of wild relatives .is maintained, and strategies have been developed and implemented for minimizing genetic erosion and safeguarding their genetic diversity." However, the real extent of genetic erosion is very difficult to measure using current data Therefore, this challenging target demands better coverage, understanding and utilization of genomic and environmental data, the development of optimized ways to integrate these data with social and other sciences and policy analysis to enable more flexible, evidence based models to underpin FAnGR conservation. At the conference, we attempted to identify the most important problems for effective livestock genomic resource conservation during the next decade. Twenty priority questions were identified that could be broadly categorized into challenges related to methodology, analytical approaches, data management and conservation. It should be acknowledged here that while the focus of our meeting was predominantly around genetics, genomics and animal science, many of the practical challenges facing conservation of genomic resources are societal in origin and are predicated on the value (e.g., socio-economic and cultural) of these resources to farmers, rural communities and society as a whole. The overall conclusion is that despite the fact that the livestock sector has been relatively well-organized in the application of genetic methodologies to date, there is still a large gap between the current state-of-the-art in the use of tools to characterize genomic resources and its application to many non-commercial and local breeds, hampering the consistent utilization of genetic and genomic data as indicators of genetic erosion and diversity. The livestock genomic sector therefore needs to make a concerted effort in the coming decade to enable to the democratization of the powerful tools that are now at its disposal, and to ensure that they are applied in the context of breed conservation as well as development.

Chinese Academy of Sciences ; National Natural Science Foundation of China ; European Union ; United Nations Environment Programme ; Global Environment Programme ; Peer Review