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Animal breeding has been complicated by persisting factors across species, cultures, geography, and time. In Made to Order , Margaret E. Derry explains these factors and other breeding concerns in relation to both animals and society in North America and Europe over the past three centuries. Made to Order addresses how breeding methodology evolved, what characterized the aims of breeding, and the way structures were put in place to regulate the occupation. Illustrated by case studies on important farm animals and companion species, the book presents a synthetic overview of livestock breeding as a whole. It gives considerable emphasis to genetics and animal breeding in the post-1960 period, the relationship between environmental and improvement breeding, and regulation of breeding as seen through pedigrees. In doing so, Made to Order shows how studying the ancient human practice of animal breeding can illuminate the ways in which human thinking, theorizing, and evolving characterize our interactions with all-natural processes.

Livestock and poultry breeding industry is one of the main economic pillars of northeastern China. However, the amount of pollutants produced is much higher than that in other parts of China. Through a questionnaire survey, indoor experiment, and outdoor experiment, it was found that the resource utilization rate of livestock and poultry manure in the northeastern region is low, with the pollution of livestock and poultry breeding mainly including air and water pollution. The alarm level of cultivated land and manure is II. While the livestock and poultry breeding is relatively concentrated area, its level is higher than grade II. Based on the pollution status of small farms, biogas can be produced through fermentation, along with the preparation of organic fertilizer, to completely utilize the manure and straw, while obtaining higher economic value, and effectively controlling the pollution from livestock and poultry breeding.

Wayne Powell and colleagues compare the different tools and approaches used by the plant breeding community versus the animal breeding community for crop and livestock improvement. They argue that the two disciplines can be united via adoption of genomic selection along with the exchange of resources and techniques between the two areas. The rate of annual yield increases for major staple crops must more than double relative to current levels in order to feed a predicted global population of 9 billion by 2050. Controlled hybridization and selective breeding have been used for centuries to adapt plant and animal species for human use. However, achieving higher, sustainable rates of improvement in yields in various species will require renewed genetic interventions and dramatic improvement of agricultural practices. Genomic prediction of breeding values has the potential to improve selection, reduce costs and provide a platform that unifies breeding approaches, biological discovery, and tools and methods. Here we compare and contrast some animal and plant breeding approaches to make a case for bringing the two together through the application of genomic selection. We propose a strategy for the use of genomic selection as a unifying approach to deliver innovative 'step changes' in the rate of genetic gain at scale.

At present, the contradiction between survival and ecology necessitates the integration of crop planting, chemical fertilizer application, and livestock and poultry breeding. Reasonably integrated crop-livestock systems (ICLSs) have become an important part of regional ecological and agricultural development. In this study, the relationship between manure nutrient demands for crops and manure nutrient supply from livestock is considered based on the balance of ICLSs in Jiangxi Province, China. The land carrying capacity index and potential of livestock breeding under uncoordinated systems are further discussed. The study also addresses water environmental risk due to surplus nutrients by integrating a traditional land carrying capacity framework and hydrological model. The results show that phosphorus absorption in land areas is the main limiting factor for the development of the livestock and poultry industries. In addition, manure nutrient demand exceeded supply in most districts, while the unbalanced regions with nutrient pollution are located in the upper and middle reaches of the Ganjiang basin. In addition, expanding the crop demand for manure or increasing the manure collection rate will help reduce environmental harm; however, attention should be paid to the risk of excessive manure returns. Additional livestock manure can be transferred to regions with developed crop planting systems. This study supports more harmonious and common ICLSs construction.

The excessive use of antibiotics, disinfectants, and drugs in livestock and poultry breeding has resulted in a rise in the presence of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs). Antibiotic-resistant bacteria (ARB) and ARGs have been widely found in animal feces, farm wastewater, and farm air. ARGs can not only spread across media through adsorption and migration, but also transfer resistance across bacterial genera through horizontal gene transfer. Livestock breeding has become a fixed and unavoidable source of ARGs in the environment. Existing technologies for controlling ARGs, such as composting, disinfection, and sewage treatment, are not efficient in removing ARB and ARGs from waste. Furthermore, the remaining ARGs still possess a strong capacity for dissemination. At present, antibiotics used in animal husbandry are difficult to replace in a short period of time. The growth and potential risks of resistance genes in livestock and poultry breeding sources in the receiving environment are not yet clear. In this paper, we summarize the current situation of ARGs in the livestock and poultry breeding environment. We also explain the key environmental processes, main influencing factors, and corresponding ecological risks associated with ARGs in this environment. The advantages and disadvantages of current technologies for the removal of ARGs are primarily discussed. There is a particular emphasis on clarifying the spatiotemporal evolution patterns and environmental process mechanisms of ARGs, as well as highlighting the importance and urgency of developing efficient pollution control technologies.

Due to recent innovations in gene editing technology, great progress has been made in livestock breeding, with researchers rearing gene-edited pigs, cattle, sheep, and other livestock. Gene-editing technology involves knocking in, knocking out, deleting, inhibiting, activating, or replacing specific bases of DNA or RNA sequences at the genome level for accurate modification, and such processes can edit genes at a fixed point without needing DNA templates. In recent years, although clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)/Cas9 system-mediated gene-editing technology has been widely used in research into the genetic breeding of animals, the system’s efficiency at inserting foreign genes is not high enough, and there are certain off-target effects; thus, it is not appropriate for use in the genome editing of large livestock such as cashmere goats. In this study, the development status, associated challenges, application prospects, and future prospects of CRISPR/Cas9-mediated precision gene-editing technology for use in livestock breeding were reviewed to provide a theoretical reference for livestock gene function analysis, genetic improvement, and livestock breeding that account for characteristics of local economies.

Resilience in the narrow sense of reactions upon infectious diseases is defined as the ability to maintain performance, regardless of pathogen burden. This includes the ability of an animal to maintain performance under infection or to rapidly return to prior performance levels after infection. This can be due to resistance or tolerance or a combination of both. Resilience in a broader sense can also include this reaction in performance upon environmental challenges such as changes in diet, social grouping, or management procedures. Here, Harlizius et al identify new phenotypes useful for breeding for resilience, including phenotypes collected under more challenging commercial conditions, and genes and gene variants related to specific diseases.

Background Fighting and controlling epidemic and endemic diseases represents a considerable cost to livestock production. Much research is dedicated to breeding disease resilient livestock, but this is not yet a common objective in practical breeding programs. In this paper, we investigate how future breeding programs may benefit from recent research on disease resilience. Main body We define disease resilience in terms of its component traits resistance (R: the ability of a host animal to limit within-host pathogen load (PL)) and tolerance (T: the ability of an infected host to limit the damage caused by a given PL), and model the host's production performance as a reaction norm on PL, depending on R and T. Based on this, we derive equations for the economic values of resilience and its component traits. A case study on porcine respiratory and reproductive syndrome (PRRS) in pigs illustrates that the economic value of increasing production in infectious conditions through selection for R and T can be more than three times higher than by selection for production in disease-free conditions. Although this reaction norm model of resilience is helpful for quantifying its relationship to its component traits, its parameters are difficult and expensive to quantify. We consider the consequences of ignoring R and T in breeding programs that measure resilience as production in infectious conditions with unknown PL—particularly, the risk that the genetic correlation between R and T is unfavourable (antagonistic) and that a trade-off between them neutralizes the resilience improvement. We describe four approaches to avoid such antagonisms: (1) by producing sufficient PL records to estimate this correlation and check for antagonisms—if found, continue routine PL recording, and if not found, shift to cheaper proxies for PL; (2) by selection on quantitative trait loci (QTL) known to influence both R and T in favourable ways; (3) by rapidly modifying towards near-complete resistance or tolerance, (4) by re-defining resilience as the animal's capacity to resist (or recover from) the perturbation caused by an infection, measured as temporal deviations of production traits in within-host longitudinal data series. Conclusions All four alternatives offer promising options for genetic improvement of disease resilience, and most rely on technological and methodological developments and innovation in automated data generation.

The scale of regional livestock and poultry breeding (LPB) is generally not determined by the supporting capacity (fodder supply), but by the environmental carrying capacity of wastes from the LPB. The soil’s own nutrient-supplying capacity used to be overlooked, which consequently produced an inaccurate result of carrying capacity estimation of the LPB. An empirical method was, therefore, employed to evaluate the soil’s own nutrient-supplying capacity and further determine the carrying capacity and environmental risks of the LPB accurately. Thirteen counties along the coast of Jiangsu were selected to conduct this study, according to the framework of planting-breeding balance. Our results indicate that, including the soil’s own nutrient-supplying capacity in the estimation of the carrying capacity of the LPB, it can reduce the original carrying capacity by 50%. This suggests that our empirical method can significantly increase the accuracy of estimating the carrying capacity of the LPB. The carrying capacity of the LPB in the study area varies from 1.5 to 48.08 pigs/hm 2 , with a mean of 14 pigs/hm 2 based on phosphorus (P) balance. Furthermore, four sub-regions (Ganyu, Dongtai, Dafeng, and Guannan) that have a high P pollution risk should focus on controlling the scale of the LPB. The nitrogen (N) pollution risk in the study area is generally low. Results suggest that the soil’s own nutrient-supplying capacity plays an important role in estimating the carrying capacity of the LPB accurately. This study can provide insights on reducing environmental risks of the LPB, which may be beneficial for decision makers.