Breeding strategies for animal resilience to weather variation in meat sheep

Abstract

Background The alteration in weather patterns expected due to climate change will affect farm animal performance, probably resulting in lower quantity and quality of available products. A potential mitigation strategy would be to breed selected animals for enhanced resilience to climate change. In this context, resilience would reflect stable animal performance in spite of weather variation. The objectives of this study were to (i) derive and characterise novel animal resilience phenotypes, (ii) investigate their genetic profiles and (iii) assess the impact of integrating them in breeding strategies for genetic improvement in meat sheep. Results Random regression models were used to jointly analyse live body weight measured in different time points throughout the growth phases of 4469 Scottish Blackface sheep and weather variables during the same period to derive novel resilience phenotypes. The genetic analysis of these phenotypes revealed significant genetic variance and heritability, and an antagonistic genetic correlation with some animal performance traits. Simulated breeding strategies demonstrated that a relative emphasis of 10% on resilience compared to other traits would enhance performance stability against weather volatility without compromising animal growth. Conclusions Novel resilience traits exhibited sufficient genetic variation to be amenable to genetic improvement with selective breeding and are recommended to be included in future breeding goals.

A comprehensive genome-wide scan detects genomic regions related to local adaptation and climate resilience in Mediterranean domestic sheep

“…These results imply the need for a multi-trait breeding index to underpin improvement in both animal production and fitness traits, where the latter are manifested in milk yield being unaffected by weather volatility and long lifespan. The feasibility of developing such indices in selective breeding given the appropriate input parameters has been documented [ 22 ].…”

“…The study of the genetic architecture of adaptive traits that are relevant to animal performance in response to changing environmental conditions, such as weather fluctuations, could also contribute to the characterization of animal genetic resources [ 20 ], and at the same time, provide essential information for future selective breeding strategies to mitigate the effects of climate change on the respective breeding goals [ 21 , 22 ]. Genome-wide association studies on heritable adaptive traits have recently focused on animal production resilience to climate change in dairy cattle [ 23 ] and dairy goats [ 24 ], and have revealed potential candidate genes that are involved in animal stress and metabolic responses.…”

“…Genome-wide association studies on heritable adaptive traits have recently focused on animal production resilience to climate change in dairy cattle [ 23 ] and dairy goats [ 24 ], and have revealed potential candidate genes that are involved in animal stress and metabolic responses. Simulation studies have demonstrated that the integration of resilience traits in selective breeding programmes could enhance long-term sustainability of animal performance [ 22 ].…”

Climate-Resilient Dairy Cattle Production: Applications of Genomic Tools and Statistical Models

“…These markers, however, may not be observed in another population as the environmental temperature may affect its expression. Hence, it is always necessary to consider the climatic conditions in a particular region before incorporating their breeding strategies ( 116 , 117 ).…”

Competence to thrive: resilience as an indicator of positive health and positive welfare in animals

“…A type of resilience appears to have been first recognized in farm animals as a distinction between resistance to infestation and resistance to the effects of infestation of sheep with the nematode parasite Haemonchus contortus (Clunies Ross 1932). Resilience has been assessed in the context of nematode parasite infection (Albers et al 1987;Bisset and Morris 1996;Kelly et al 2013), microbial infection (Mulder and Rashidi 2017;Putz et al 2019;Bai and Plastow 2022) high or low temperature exposure (Mengistu et al 2017;Sánchez-Molano et al 2020;Tsartsianidou et al 2021), diet (Steel 2003), feed shortage (Marıa et al 2004), weaning (Hine et al 2019;Revilla et al 2019), routine management within the production environment (Meyer and Colditz 2015;Elgersma et al 2018;Nunes Marsiglio Sarout et al 2018;Nguyen-Ba et al 2020;Poppe et al 2020;Poppe et al 2021b;Sun et al 2021;Bai and Plastow 2022), and the transition period in the dairy cow (Van Dixhoorn et al 2018) amongst other contexts (e.g. Bushby et al 2018;Brito et al 2020).…”