Indigenous stocks as treasure troves for sustainable livestock production in the 21st century: Insights from small ruminant genomics

Abstract

The versatility of indigenous sheep and goats to adapt to diverse environmental conditions and production systems positions them as significant animal genetic resources for sustaining livelihoods of agro-pastoralists, pastoralists and small holder farmers in many developing countries. In most of these countries, recording phenotypic and pedigree information has remained a challenge, cohorts of contemporaries are often of inadequate size, breeding infrastructures are non-existent and where they exist are rudimentary, and advanced reproductive technologies are difficult to implement. These drawbacks can however, be circumvented through community–based breeding programmes (CBBP) which can provide a framework to design and implement basic recording and mating schemes.