climate change is real and affects livestock production and economic aspect of agriculture.By selection and breeding methods livestock with climate resilience ability can be reared.

1. CREDIT SEMINAR (AG-
629)
SELECTION AND BREEDING OF
LIVESTOCK
FOR CLIMATE RESILIENCEPRESENTED
BY-
VIVEK KUMAR
NAYAK

2. 32 major
droughts
recorded
globally in
2015.
CO2 level in
air 406.17
ppm-highest in
650,000 years.
Global
temperature
increased by
1.9°F since
1920. 16 of the 17
warmest years
on record
occurring since
2001
Climate Change -Present
Scenario
(NASA/GISS, 2015)

3. Scenario in India
 India was among the top three most disaster-hit
countries in 2016-economic damages worth $3.30
billion.
 India had 19 events of natural disasters, including
floods ​, droughts​ and heat waves, in 2016.
 33 million people along with 18.2 million livestock
were affected by the record high temperatures in
2015.
(UNISDR,2016)
 The rainfall that occurred in 2016 was 19% less than

4. Effect on Livestock Economy
 Estimated annual loss due to
direct thermal stress on livestock
is about 1.8 million tonnes of milk
(2661.62 crores) that is, nearly 2%
of the total milk production in the
country. (Chauhan &
Ghosh,2014)
 India could see economic losses of
8.7% of its GDP by 2100 if fails to
respond to climate

5.  Climate change directly affects the health,
reproduction, nutrition etc of animals resulting in:
Poor performance
Inferior /reduced product quality & quantity
Outbreak of novel diseases.
(Hayhoe et al.,2007;Frumhoff et
al., 2006)
 Indirect impacts will be experienced through:
Change in soil fertility
Intensified desertification
Change in productivity of range lands
Scarcity of water resources.
(Ghahramani and Moore,
2013;Kebede,2016)
Impact of Climate change on
Livestock

6. Impact of climate on livestock
production
Growth
Body
weight
Feed
intake
Daily
gain
Body
condition
scoring
Milk
Productio
n
Milk
production
Lactose
Protein
Fat
Reproducti
on
Estrus
Expression
Conception
Rate
Fertilization
Estradiol/
Testosteron
e
Disease
s
Vector
Born
Disease
Theleriosis
Rift valley
Fever
Foot rot
Reduced production &
Economic loss

7. Genetic Approach for Climate
Resilience
 Selection of Livestock
 Conservation of Indigenous Germplasm
 Maintenance of Animal Diversity
 Breeding Strategy
Based on h² &
BV
Genomic
Approach

8. Selection of Livestock
 Goal of any selection program for climate resilience-
to develop livestock that can perform in challenging
environments while maintaining high levels of
productivity and carcass performance.
(Scharf et al., 2010)
 Rather selecting for specific traits alternative
approach Is to target general robustness(ability to
adjust range of environment condition)
(Boettcher et al., 2015)
 When selection based on h² & BV estimates
animals/breeding stock are observed under uniformly

9.  Genetic selection can be utilized to increase climate
resilience traits which are heritable, provided that the
phenotypes and tools exist to make these selection
decisions.
(Ravagnolo and Misztal,2000)
Climate Resilient Traits Heritability References
Respiration rate 0.76-0.84 Burrow, 2001
Body temperature
regulation
0.21-0.68 Dikmen et al., 2012
Rectal temperature 0.13-0.17 Dikmen et al.,2012
Resistance to TB 0.49 Mackintosh et al., 2000
Somatic cell count &
mastitis resistance
0.11 and
0.04
respectivel
Mrode and Swanson,
1996
Heritability Estimates

10. Genomic Approach
 Adaptations of animal breeds to environments are
typically associated with structural and functional
genomic variations.
(Axelsson et al.,2013;Lv et al.,2014)
 Unravelling molecular changes and genetic
polymorphism associated with seasonal acclimation
will offer new insights into selecting domestic
animals for thermal tolerance.
 Climate resilient traits like thermo tolerance &
disease resistance appears to be a quantitative trait
influenced by many regions of the genome.

11.  Examples-
50 genes not considered as HSPs undergo
changes in response to heat stress.
(Sonna et al., 2002)
NRAMP1 gene (natural resistance-associated
macrophage protein) is associated with innate
immune system.
Sleek hair gene-Chromosome 20-shows large
 Approach
Gene Mapping
MAS
Candidate gene approach
Dense whole genome SNP chips
Transgeneis

12.  Genomic marker information can be used to
introgress favourable alleles, while keeping
favourable alleles for production.
 If the adaptive trait is due to a single or few genes,
they can be mapped and be introgressed into
commercial breed without having adverse effects on
production (Odegård et al.,2009)
 The Bovine SNP50 Bead Chip is a genetic tool to
estimate an animal’s inheritance of specific
mutations at 50,000 places on its chromosomes and
make it possible to identify genetic markers that
Marker Assisted Selection

13. Candidate Genes for Resilience
 Adaptive traits are quantitative in nature influenced
by many regions of the genome.
Pathway/Function Gene(s) Publication
Cellular response to
stress
STAC, WRNIP1, MLH1, SMC6,
GEM1
Howard et al.,
2014
Response to heat STAC Howard et al.,
2014
Cellular response to
stress
CCNG, TNRC6A Howard et al.,
2014
Respiration ITGA9 Howard et al.,
2014
RNA metabolism LSM5, SNORA19, U1,
SCARNA3
Dikmen et al.,
2012
List of Pathways/Genes Identified in Genomic Studies as
Potential Candidate Genes

14. Transgenesis
 Several transgenic animal models developed to
study resilience traits.
Geneticist Kevin
Wells of USDA’s
Agricultural
Research
Service (ARS)
developed first
mastitis
resistant cow
“Annie”, born in
March 2000
resistance to S.
Scientists at
Hematech Inc. in
Sioux Falls,
South Dakota
biotech
company
genetically
engineered
cattle resistant
to mad cow
disease.
Transgenic
Sheep that can
stand feed
shortages during
drought Lose
less weight
under harsh
conditions and
easier to keep
alive during feed
shortages.

15. Conservation of Indigenous
Germplasm
Need for
conservation
Well adapted to
their agro-climatic
zone
possess structural
and functional
genomic variations
for resilience traits
Maintain
Consistent
production level
(Dahiya and
Kumari,2011)

16. Resilience of Indian livestock to
Climate Change
• Show wide features of adaptability
• Withstand heat and graze even at 40oC
Indigenous
cattle
• Well adapted to hot dry desert conditions
• Low metabolic requirements
• conserve energy for diversion to production
Tharparkar,
Nagori &
Sahiwal
• Tolerant to foot rot & mastitis
• protozoan diseases like trypanosomiasis,
anaplasmosis, piroplasmosis
Sahiwal,
Nellore
(Glass and Jensen,200

17. Features of AdaptabilityMORPHOLOGICA
L
• Dewlap
• Loose skin
• More sweat
glands
• Hair coat PHYSIOLOGICA
L
• Low
metabolism
• High
cutaneous
Respiration
• Less
Panting
• Lower

18. Maintenance of Diversity
 Use of multi-species and multi-breed herds to
maintain high diversity - important strategy to buffer
against climatic and economic adversities.
(Hoffmann 2003;FAO, 2009)
 Animal genetic diversity allows to select stock or
develop new breeds in response to climate change &
new disease threats.
(Hoffmann ,2003)
 Methods to characterize adaptive traits & associated
knowledge from both commercial and local breed
diversity will help in selection for climate resilience.

19. Breeding Strategies
 The best method of reducing the impact of the stressors
to improve productivity is to breed animals that are
productive in their presence, without the need for
managerial interventions. (Burrow et al.,2005)
 Breeding programme with progeny testing of sires in
different environments and applying index selection to
simultaneously improve performance.
(Mulder et al., 2006)
 Selection for heat tolerance in high-output breeds based
on rectal temperature measurements and inclusion of THI
in genetic evaluation models are promising.
(Dikmen & Hansen ,2009)

20. Government Initiatives
 To cope with Climate, a major project titled, National
Initiative on Climate Resilient Agriculture (NICRA)
was launched in 2010-11 with an outlay of Rs.350
crores.
(11th -Five yr
plan,GOI)
 Centres for livestock at:
NDRI- livestock production
IVRI - livestock diseases aspects.
 National Action Plan on Climate Change(NAPCC)
was launched & later changed to National Mission for
Sustainable Agriculture (NMSA) to increase
agricultural productivity.
th

21. Objectives of NICRA-
 Understand the unique traits in indigenous livestock
responsible for higher heat tolerance.
 Develop data base on genetic adaptation in cattle
and buffalo.
 Identify molecular markers under different stresses.
 Develop adaptation and mitigation strategies to
thermal stress.

22. Challenges
 Ne of adaptive breeds is low- difficult to exploit
genetic variation.
 Breeding for climate resilience requires demanding
data quality and analysis & only small percentage of
herds maintain accurate records.
 Adaptive traits -
 Strengthen characterization and evaluation of AnGR,
and develop simple methods to characterize
adaptive traits.
 Difficult to study & record
 Heritability
 Levels of non-additive genetic
variation
 More susceptible to G-E
(Frankham,200
9)