3.1 Challenges for animal breeding (2024)

The major challenge for food production in agriculture is the on-going growth of the human population towards 9 billion in 2050 (United Nations Development Goals, 2005). Livestock systems play an important role in agriculture by producing high quality food. In developing countries animals provide not only meat, milk and eggs, but also fibre, fertiliser for crops, manure for fuel and draught power. In developing countries productivity and fitness traits are the major challenge for animal breeding to facilitate production of food by animals and for food supply. In developed countries intensive animal production systems are developed in which animals are kept in controlled circumstances protecting animals against diseases. These systems require a lot of labour and often do not increase animal’s welfare. The request from society for improved health and welfare traits create a new challenge for animal breeders. Healthy and robust animals meet the request for minimizing the use of antibiotics in livestock. In these countries labor is expensive. This strengthens the importance of health and robustness (it appeals for more attention for adaptive traits in breeding) and it stimulates automation of processes in livestock keeping. Robustness in dairy cattle might be assessed by analyzing frequent milk production data as is illustrated in the next picture:

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(Source: Wageningen University)

Resilient, robust, cows show minimal short disturbances in milk yield after a stressful occurrence, while non-resilient, non-robust animals show in that situation more production loss over a longer period.

Breeding challenges are influenced by a wide range of factors. They are determined by the needs and priorities of the owners of the animals, the consumers of animal products, the food industry, and increasingly the general public. Finding the right balance between the different demands is a continuous process, and requires anticipation of future conditions and careful planning to establish effective breeding programs.