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Abstract

Latxa and Manech, each one with their black and red variation, are similar dairy sheep breeds raised in the Spanish (Latxa Cara Negra/LCN and Latxa Cara Rubia/LCR) and French (Manech Tête Noire/MTN and Manech Tête Rousse/MTR) Basque country. Their breeding programs have been run separately until now. However, increasing exchanges of germplasm, insemination doses in majority, have occurred over the last 20 years, mainly from France to Spain. ARDI2 is an INTERREG project (EFA032/01), which intends to harmonise the genetic tools across Latxa and Manech and aims at creating a common selection program between these breeds. A recent previous project (ARDI, EFA208/16) led to the creation of the so-called ARTALDEAN European Economic Interest Grouping cross-border organisation, whose purpose is to discuss the breeding decisions and selection objectives of both populations.

The ARDI2 project (2024-2026) develops several tasks targeting a greater harmonisation and cooperation between Latxa and Manech selection programs. The consolidation of ARTALDEAN to move towards a greater integration of these programs is grounded on increasing the professional and technical relationships, strengthening the genetic connections between populations and harmonising the standard and udder morphology criteria. An international genomic evaluation will be tested and deployed as a major step toward a common breeding program. Besides, management of existing genetic variability will be strengthened through the development of new tools valorising genomic data. New sustainability related traits, relevant in the context of climate change, will be studied for future incorporation in the breeding schemes (methane emissions, thermotolerance, longevity). A last task is dedicated to support the incorporation of innovations and the incorporation of new technologies and societal requirements into the improvement programs.

The across-country genomic evaluation task will extend the work accomplished in the SMARTER project (H2020-no.772787). It will be developed for milk, fat and protein yield and content and udder morphology traits. A bi-trait model will be applied to the raw phenotypes, each country keeping its own model for the fixed effects. The genetic connection between countries is based on 452 and 1,274 common animals present in the pedigree of both countries, in LCN/MTN and LCR/MTR respectively. Genotypes from 813 LCN, 1,075 MTN 1,982 LCR, and 6,605 MTR obtained from Illumina and Affymetrix platforms will be aligned and cleaned at Interbull Centre through the GenoEx platform, which has been adapted to sheep in the framework of ARDI2. Interbull Centre will also provide genotypes ready for genetic evaluation through the adaptation of existing pipelines for the imputation stage. Hence, this project displays a good example of the extension of common tools built within ICAR/Interbull to other species than cattle.

Keywords

dairy sheep; international genomic evaluation; novel traits; Latxa breed; Manech breed; Interbull Centre

Published in

ICAR Technical Series
2025, number: 29, pages: 47-52
Title: Sustainable livestock farming through harmonisation, technology and innovation : proceedings of the 48th ICAR Annual Conference held in Anand, India 29 March - 4 April, 2025
Publisher: ICAR

Conference

the 48th ICAR Annual Conferenc, 29 March - 4 April, 2025 Anand, India

SLU Authors

UKÄ Subject classification

Genetics and Breeding in Agricultural Sciences

Publication identifier

  • ISBN: 978-92-95014-25-1

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/145095