Domestication of livestock species and a long history of migrations, selection and adaptation have created an enormous variety of breeds. Conservation of these genetic resources relies on demographic characterization, recording of production environments and effective data management. In addition, molecular genetic studies allow a comparison of genetic diversity within and across breeds and a reconstruction of the history of breeds and ancestral populations. This has been summarized for cattle, yak, water buffalo, sheep, goats, camelids, pigs, horses, and chickens. Further progress is expected to benefit from advances in molecular technology.

/pdf/genetic-diversity-in-farm-animals-a-review-52h3ut1h2t.pdf

Genetic diversity in farm animals--a review.

As a unit within Purdue University, the College of Pharmacy “is committed to maintaining a community which recognizes and values the inherent worth and dignity of every person; fosters tolerance, sensitivity, understanding, and mutual respect among its members; and encourages each individual to strive to reach his or her own potential. In pursuit of its goal of academic excellence, the University seeks to develop and nurture diversity. The University believes that diversity among its many members strengthens the institution, stimulates creativity, promotes the exchange of ideas, and enriches campus life.”1

多様性--The Diversity

In times of rapid global and unforeseeable environmental changes, there is an urgent need for a sustainable cattle breeding policy, based on a global view. Most of the indigenous breeds are specialized in a particular habitat or production system but are rapidly disappearing. Thus, they represent an important resource to meet present and future breeding objectives. Based on 105 microsatellites, we obtained thorough information on genetic diversity and population structure of 16 cattle breeds that cover a geographical area from the domestication centre near Anatolia, through the Balkan and alpine regions, to the North-West of Europe. Breeds under strict artificial selection and indigenous breeds under traditional breeding schemes were included. The overall results showed that the genetic diversity is widespread in Busa breeds in the Anatolian and Balkan areas, when compared with the alpine and north-western European breeds. Our results reflect long-term evolutionary and short-term breeding events very well. The regular pattern of allele frequency distribution in the entire cattle population studied clearly suggests conservation of rare alleles by conservation of preferably unselected traditional breeds with large effective population sizes. From a global and long-term conservation genetics point of view, the native and highly variable breeds closer to the domestication centre could serve as valuable sources of genes for future needs, not only for cattle but also for other farm animals.

Genetic diversity of European cattle breeds highlights the conservation value of traditional unselected breeds with high effective population size.

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.

/pdf/prospects-and-challenges-for-the-conservation-of-farm-animal-4dh05k8stb.pdf

Prospects and challenges for the conservation of farm animal genomic resources, 2015-2025

Classification of cattle breeds contributes to our understanding of the history of cattle and is essential for an effective conservation of genetic diversity. Here we review the various classifications over the last two centuries and compare the most recent classifications with genetic data. The classifications devised during the 19th to the late 20th century were in line with the Linnaean taxonomy and emphasized cranial or horn morphology. Subsequent classifications were based on coat color, geographic origin or molecular markers. Several theories were developed that linked breed characteristics either to a supposed ancestral aurochs subspecies or to a presumed ethnic origin. Most of the older classifications have now been discarded, but have introduced several Latin terms that are still in use. The most consistent classification was proposed in 1995 by Felius and emphasizes the geographic origin of breeds. This is largely in agreement with the breed clusters indicated by a biochemical and molecular genetic analysis, which reflect either groups of breeds with a common geographic origin or single breeds that have expanded by export and/or crossbreeding. We propose that this information is also relevant for managing the genetic diversity of cattle.

On the Breeds of Cattle—Historic and Current Classifications

Two methods have been developed for the assessment of conservation priorities on the basis of molecular markers. According to the Weitzman approach, contributions to genetic diversity are derived from genetic distances between populations. Alternatively, diversity within and across populations is optimized by minimizing marker-estimated kinships. We have applied, for the first time, both methods to a comprehensive data set of 69 European cattle breeds, including all cosmopolitan breeds and several local breeds, for which genotypes of 30 microsatellite markers in 25-50 animals per breed have been obtained. Both methods were used to calculate the gain in diversity if a breed was added to a set of nine non-endangered breeds. Weitzman-derived diversities were confounded by genetic drift in isolated populations, which dominates the genetic distances but does not necessarily increase the conservation value of a breed. Marker-estimated kinships across populations were less disturbed by genetic drift than the Weitzman diversities and assigned high conservation values to Mediterranean breeds, which indeed have genetic histories that differ from the non-endangered breeds. Prospects and limitations of marker-assisted decisions on conservation priorities are discussed.

Marker-assisted conservation of European cattle breeds: an evaluation

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Marker-assisted conservation of European cattle breeds: an evaluation