Understanding the seasonality of performance resilience to climate volatility in Mediterranean dairy sheep

Abstract

As future climate challenges become increasingly evident, enhancing performance resilience of farm animals may contribute to mitigation against adverse weather and seasonal variation, and underpin livestock farming sustainability. In the present study, we develop novel seasonal resilience phenotypes reflecting milk production changes to fluctuating weather. We evaluate the impact of calendar season (autumn, winter and spring) on animal performance resilience by analysing 420,534 milk records of 36,908 milking ewes of the Chios breed together with relevant meteorological data from eastern Mediterranean. We reveal substantial seasonal effects on resilience and significant heritable trait variation (h2 = 0.03–0.17). Resilience to cold weather (10 °C) of animals that start producing milk in spring was under different genetic control compared to autumn and winter as exemplified by negative genetic correlations (− 0.09 to − 0.27). Animal resilience to hot weather (25 °C) was partially under the same genetic control with genetic correlations between seasons ranging from 0.43 to 0.86. We report both favourable and antagonistic associations between animal resilience and lifetime milk production, depending on calendar season and the desirable direction of genetic selection. Concluding, we emphasise on seasonal adaptation of animals to climate and the need to incorporate the novel seasonal traits in future selective breeding programmes.

A comprehensive genome-wide scan detects genomic regions related to local adaptation and climate resilience in Mediterranean domestic sheep

“…Phenotypic and genetic correlations between traits will determine the optimal way of combining them towards holistic animal improvement. In the present study, an antagonistic genetic correlation of resilience to hot weather with lifetime milk production was estimated (Table 4 ), which is consistent with previous estimates between animal resilience and milk production using pedigree data [ 33 , 73 ]. This genetic antagonism was also evident in the estimated genomic breeding values for the two traits (Fig.…”

“…The heritability estimate of Chios sheep resilience to temperature change in heat stress conditions was significantly higher than zero (Table 4 ). Although these genomic estimates were based on a relatively small number of genotyped individuals, they are consistent with previous population estimates derived from a pedigree analysis of approximately 37,000 animals [ 33 ]. These results confirm that this trait could be improved through genetic selection.…”

“…Individual resilience phenotypes, reflecting a change in milk production in response to temperature variability, were derived based on a methodology that is described in detail in [ 33 ]. Briefly, reaction norm functions were fitted to milk yield records using a random regression model that included the corresponding air temperature measurement and accounted for the fixed effects of farm, lactation number, calendar year and month of lambing, and the number of days from lambing when milk yield was recorded.…”

Breeding Strategies for Weather Resilience in Small Ruminants in Atlantic and Mediterranean Climates

“…Ideally, these novel phenotypes will allow adequate characterization of animal resilience and will be easy to measure and incorporate into routine data recording. Some of these new phenotypes have already been defined based on changes in the quantity and quality of production associated with thermal stress events and have been reported to be useful for the characterization of individual resistance to adverse climates (Carabaño et al, 2014(Carabaño et al, , 2021Garner et al, 2016;Sánchez-Molano et al, 2019;Tsartsianidou et al, 2021).…”

Lactation curve, milk production of Pelibuey ewes and preweaning growth rate of the lambs

“…The predominant hair breeds in Mexico are Pelibuey and Blackbelly (Hinojosa-Cuéllar et al, 2012). Of these, the most frequently used in Mexico in grazing and mixed systems is Pelibuey, primarily due to its adaptation to various agro-climate environments, which currently is a factor of great consideration because of the climate changes affecting the animals (Núñez-Domínguez et al, 2016;Tsartsianidou et al, 2021), and also due to its characteristics of prolificacy and rusticity (Ramón-Ugalde and Sanginés- García, 2002) and resistance to gastrointestinal nematodes (Zaragoza-Vera et al, 2019).…”